babble, babble on and on...: Old Pali Road and Likelike Falls

Pali Lookout is a classic tourist spot on a cliff on the Koolau Mountain Range overlooked Kaneohe Bay, Chinaman's Hat, and Hawaii Pacific's Windward Campus. This cliff has a gruesome and scary superstitious history. The story is in 1795 Hawaiian King Kamehameha and his warriors defeated the O'ahu armies by sending them over these steep, forested cliffs and claiming his victory and uniting the Hawaiian Islands. They say the area especially along Old Pali Road is haunted by taunting ghosts and Hawaiian Gods. With the beautiful views, windy, and scary history we decided to hike the near by Old Pali Road and find the Likelike Falls.

I have done this hike before with a friend/date but we got lost. I started at the top of the lookout and reached the bottom of the highway, went under the highway overpass and then down to an access road off the Kooalau Golf Course. At that time I honestly did not know where I was going. Just knew most hikes on Oahu connect to each other, but how and where? When we felt like we were finally defeated, we went back to the lookout.

So we tried again with my BF, Laura, Aaron and Erica. They have never done the hike before so I thought it would be fun. Hopefully we can find Likelike Falls and go to a birthday dinner afterwards. This is considered an easy trail about 2 miles long. We started at the lookout. It follows along Old Pali Road so most of the hike is pave however the road has been take over by wild plants, trees. When we reach the Pali Highway overpass, we had to crawl underneath to get to the rest of the trail. By the time we pass the overpass, we were pretty much following the access road. We met up with random hikers who were also heading to Likelike Falls. So we decided to hike close to them. We ran into some Hawaii Electric guys at the bottom of the paved road. The guy told us the trail head was to the left of the road. It looked like the trail was going to be uphill and mostly dirt now. Yay for markers. We caught up with the guys again. He told us that he did the trail 11x and got lost trying to find Likelike Falls. Now he knows how to get there. Ok hopefully we don't get lost. We get to the top of the hill with not much effort until I felt like we were lost again. The guy said to the left and right is the ridge trail which is really hard. He said if you go down then your heading to the Likelike Falls. So down we went, trusting a guy we dont know just for the sake of adventure and hopefully finding Likelike Falls. Maybe in about 30-45 minutes we reached the falls. It is really small but pretty to see. We decided to turn back since we had to get going for dinner. As we return to Pali Lookout we ran into the Hawaii Electric guys taking off with their helicopter. It was like a show watching guys dangle to fix power lines. Then we got close to the lookout and we could finally see the small Pali falls along the side of the Old Pali Road. In total this hike was 3 hours long. Total possible calories burn: 1600.