RISING ABOVE IT ALL
As AC/DC might say, it’s a long way to the top – but the climb up Koko Crater proves to be well worth the massive effort required, once you get there
IT’S difficult to say which is more daunting – the 1048 railway sleepers to be climbed on the trail going straight up the 368m volcanic cone known as Koko Crater, or the relentless barrage of rifle fire.
The day we attempted the climb was mid-winter on Oahu in the Hawaiian islands, but the humidity was through the roof, the temperature was rapidly soaring and the sweat was pouring out in buckets.
It was also peacetime, 75 years since what Americans call “the Day of Infamy’’ when a Japanese fleet – including six aircraft carriers that had sailed undetected across the Pacific – attacked Pearl Harbor.
More than 2400 Americans were killed and over 1100 were wounded as attacking aircraft swept across the sky and turned a beautiful Hawaiian morning into a scene from hell.
At the top of Koko Crater are World War II-era concrete bunkers. The sleepers are what remain of the tracks used to winch tramloads of military supplies to the top.
The 360-degree view out over Diamond Head and Waikiki to the west, the Windward Coast towards Kailua Bay and the beautiful Lanikai Beach to the north, and south across Hanauma Bay, Koko Head and the Pacific takes the breath away – assuming the climber has regained their breath.
That vista makes the heat and hard climb worth the effort, even for the 20-something couple who doubled over in distress near the top of the near-vertical trail the morning my son-in-law and I clambered and swore our way to the summit.
The first third of the climb is a reasonable grade and gets the climber used to stepping from sleeper to sleeper. In the middle is a test of resolve, where the ground below has been washed away and you’re forced to maintain a sure footing for about 50m, cautiously stepping one sleeper at a time and all the while climbing.
The return trip down is just as challenging.
The grade seems to increase exponentially for the final assault on the summit. It might have been winter, but we drained our water bottles and our T-shirts were soaked as we moved maybe 20 paces at a time and kept pausing for breath.
The rattle of gunfire nearby did not help. The pops and occasional “ting’’ as a bullet struck something metallic sounded a bit too close for comfort, only to be drowned out suddenly by the deeper, louder and more insistent sound of what might have been a heavy machinegun, for all I knew.
It sounded – I was hoping – like a serious re-enactment of that dreadful day on December 7, 1941, except it wasn’t.
When we reached a point on the trail where the view opened up, we could see down below that it was business as usual at a public shooting range nestled between Koko Crater, located in the southeast of Oahu, and Hanauma Bay with its fringing coral reef, its colourful fish and turtles.
The bay is a well known spot on the tourist trail. Some suggest Elvis Presley put it on the map when it was used in a scene in his 1961 movie Blue Hawaii.
A stone’s throw to the east is another must-see spot on the tourist itinerary, Halona Blowhole, where the surging Pacific forces spray through a gap in what was once a lava flow from the Koko volcano.
Few tourists nowadays realise that a short walk from the blowhole carpark is Halona Cove, the location of one of Hollywood’s most famous love scenes when the characters played by Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr embraced in the surf in the classic From Here To Eternity.
But Koko Crater? Funnily enough, it’s not on the usual tourist trail. No one has shot a love scene at the top either. Maybe the sound of gunfire is a distraction. Maybe sweat-soaked lovers just don’t cut it on film.
But social media is starting to spread the fame. Fitness-obsessed locals love it as a place to go for a morning workout. Word has spread, with several backpackers joining the charge up the slope.
With the climb ticked off the list, there’s the tourist playground of Waikiki and Honolulu to explore.
But if too much fitness is never enough, a short drive up the coast takes you to Lanikai Ridge where you can climb to a graffitied pillbox that is another reminder of the Pacific war and presents another vista-to-die-for, overlooking Kailua Bay, Lanikai Beach (used in several TV shows) and the Moku Lua islands of Moku Nui and Moku Iki.
THE GRADE SEEMS TO INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY FOR THE FINAL ASSAULT