One of the things I love about living on Oahu is the hiking. We don't hike as often as I would like, but when we do it is never a disappointment.
The Koko Crater Arch trail is located in East Honolulu, near Hawaii Kai. We picked this one because it isn't far from our neighborhood and is rated as moderate in the All Trails app. Plus, I love hikes that have an interesting feature. In this case, the arch.
Even though we did this hike on a beautiful Saturday morning, we had no trouble finding a parking spot at the Halona Blowhole parking lot. All Trails did not have trailhead information, but I found a couple blog posts that did and it seemed pretty easy and straightforward. We just had to walk along a narrow busy road about 100 feet to mile marker 15, cross the road and start climbing.
So we walked, first past the beach we would go to later, and then the Japanese Fishing Shrine. I admit that I'm a terrible judge of distance, but it felt like more than 100 feet and we didn't see a mile marker.
After crossing the road and walking back and forth, we found the broken mile marker. Thanks Hawaii DOT. We also found two entrances...one was on the All Trails map and the other looked easier. We went with easy.
We had to climb up some rocks to get to the trail, but then it was pretty easy walking across the lava rock. It was very windy, but we didn't mind and the views were spectacular. Soon enough we saw the trail we were supposed to be on when some hikers started making their way down. We weren't too far off, but we had a steep climb and some brush to get through until we were able to merge.
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| Looking up to the arch and beyond to the ridge |
Once we were on the main trail, we took our time, carefully making our way up the steeper and steeper trail until we were eventually standing below the arch. As mrC said, we're not billy goats, so we opted to climb off to the left and go under rather than over the arch.
Loose gravel combined with the steepness and the wind made this the hardest part of the hike, but it was worth it. It was awesome to sit under the arch and take in the ocean views.
More adventurous hikers continued past the arch and up to the ridge, but we had a beach to get to (and we are happy to stick with moderate climbs). To get back down to the trail, we had to scoot on our bums or fear slipping on the gravel, but then we just took our time going down the lava rock trail.
We stayed on the proper trail on the way down. The alternate entrance we took at the start was pretty easy for climbing up, but super steep to go down. When we got to the end of the trail, we had to climb down a much bigger section of rocks. Only one slip on the gravel (me!) and now I can say I've had lava burn.
mrC got us safely back to the car, where we grabbed our beach bag and hiked down to Halona Cove Beach, aka Eternity Beach. If you’ve seen the movie From Here to Eternity, this is where they filmed the beach kissing scene.
People more courageous than us were jumping off the rocks into the water, but we were quite happy to sit on our towel and watch. We respect the water and have no intention of needing a rescue (and for the record, this beach has no lifeguards and is technically off limits).
The cool thing about this beach, is that you can't see it from the road when you're driving past. I guess that's why it is also called Secret Beach!
We counted this hike as our leg day, although I think we could've done our regular workout, too. We didn't beat ourselves up over it though.
Let me know if you have any questions!
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