News Article: 62 PEOPLE AIRLIFTED FROM KALALAU ON CHRISTMAS EVE

For Christmas break of 2014, my brother and I flew to Hawaii to hike the Kalalau Trail on Kauai’s Napali Coast. The trail stretched over 11 miles from Ke'e Beach to Kalalau Beach along the coast cliffs and was interrupted by a series of stream crossings. It was our first backpacking trip together, and it didn’t go as expected.

Aerial image of the Kalalau trail. Courtesy of acanela.com.

After two days hiking up the Haleakala Crater on the island of Maui, my brother and I flew to Kauai to hike a scenic yet challenging trail called the Kalalau Trail along the island’s north shore.

The plan was to hike 11 Miles to Kalalau Beach, spend the night and following day camping at the beach, and hike back out on the third day (which happened to be Christmas Day). We carried all our equipment, including a two-person tent and 3 days worth of food.

We started along the trail in the morning and made good progress, passing campsites at miles 3 and 6, but ended up getting tired near mile 8 and decided to spend the night at the Hanakoa Valley (Mile 6) campsite and go for the beach (Mile 11) the following day.

Kalalau trail map. Courtesy of hawaii-guide.com.

After setting up camp in the campsite area, which was composed of an outhouse, a picnic table covered by a tin roof, and a cleared area for people to camp in, we lit up our stove and made dinner. Dinner was composed of freeze-dried spaghetti made a little softer with some boiling water. We finished dinner and went in for the night.

Around 2am we were woken up by a man’s scream somewhere near the site. We turned on our lights, inspected the area around us, but couldn’t find anyone nearby and tried to go back to sleep. The rest of the night was uncomfortable, as I was so alert that I kept waking up every few minutes fearful being attacked while sleeping. The next day we learned that the man had been charged by a wild boar, which tended to roam the area.

At some point through the night, it began raining. By dawn, our tent was starting to get drenched, both from the raining from above and the stream that was starting to form (which we happened to be in the middle of). We decided to pack up and move to the only physical shelter in the area; the picnic table with the tin roof on top. The table had a thin bearded homeless man, one of many hippies that lived off the trail permanently and illegally, feeding off the coast’s fruits and drinking the stream’s fresh water. The man grumbled when he saw us there but eventually let us stay.

As the morning progressed, groups of two kept joining us under the tin roof. Each time a group joined, the man got more upset, and even more so as they began hanging their wet tents and sleeping bags around the space. By later morning there were four groups, us, two ladies one of which was an army vet, a hydro engineer and his brother, and an australian-aisan couple. At this point, the homeless man became so upset that he picked up his stuff and loudly exclaimed, “I will cross the (now flooded) stream!”. The once-small stream, which was 30 feet behind the bushes, had swollen into a fully flooded river capable of dragging a person into the vast open sea.

Ten minutes went by, and the man returned. He’s wet, naked, and shivering, and had been swept up by the stream but luckily managed to hang on to a rock right before being swept downhill to the ocean. The two women quickly wrapped him in one of their sleeping bags and began making him soup out of their supplies.

A couple of hours went by, and then out of nowhere we heard "Jim!!" and saw another semi-naked, thin white guy come out of the bushes. The homeless man jumped out of his sleeping bag and ran to embrace his friend. The new figure then told him of their community’s gathering site somewhere beyond the flooded stream, and the two disappeared together into the bushes.

By 2pm, the rain had stopped for two hours, which was enough time for the stream level to go down to allow us to cross. Among the group there was a discussion, followed by a consensus to go for it before the next wave of rain hits.

We began making our way back to the trailhead. The first stream was still high enough to be dangerous at waist deep for most of us. Someone body-belayed the army vet lady as she made her way through the water. She got to the other side and tied the rope to a tree, and we took turns crossing one after the other in a single file.

After the stream, rain began pouring again, and the sun set, making everything dark around us. The path we were walking was a narrow cliff-side trail made slippery by the rain and more precarious by the darkness. My brother’s headlamp died, and we were forced to split a headlamp. As the more experienced hiker, I gave the headlamp to my brother and followed closely after him. He would take 1-2-3 steps, stop, turn and point the light across my path, and so on. It made making progress a slow process.

We eventually reached the Mile 3 campsite. The site was followed by a stream that was now fully flooded, preventing further progress, and we decided to setup camp and wait it out. My sleeping bag and my brother’s sleeping pad were drenched, and we had to squeeze into one sleeping bag. Luckily, we had over supplied on food and had plenty left. We made mashed potatoes, bartered food supplies with other hikers, tried to get some sleep.

At dawn the next morning, the rain had momentarily stopped, and the group decided to make the final stream crossing and go for the trailhead. Like the first stream, we crossed safely, hiked for 3 miles, and made it safely back to the trailhead, which was now red-taped to prevent further access with a big TRAIL CLOSED sign. We later learned that we were the only group to make it out on foot, while 62 other hikers were rescued via helicopter.