mt. olympus

 ya know, just cruising down the highway on the back of a truck bed.

it's legal here, believe it or not.

starting out- rebekah and i. :)

 after a bit of hiking we came to this. while the sign says:

"CAUTION: end of maintained trail!"

"notice. end of trail."

"do not go beyond this sign- please turn back."

all we read was:

JUST keep climbing and

mt. olympus. 

always read between the lines, or in our case, the graffiti. 

because from what i could tell, the trail was very well maintained with fresh shoe prints and passing people.

we parked behind that ridge in the left-ish/middle of the pic. i think. 

 diamond head from a different angle. 

 the point of diamond head on the left and downtown honolulu in the middle. 

 random peacock x-ing. hello, peacock.

 there's a trail, i promise!

stephan's a little dot. i think this was the second to the last summit.

zoom in.

 these ropes were a lifesaver. literally. 

clouds traveling over the ko'olau mountains. such a cool thing to experience!

the other side of the island: kaneohe (ah!)

we were quickly engulf in the clouds. kaneohe is behind us, can't you tell? 

 and back down again. the weather was wonderful: overcast but not rainy.

(it did sprinkle a tiny bit, but it was over shortly.)

 a bad picture of koko head. i still need to do that hike. :)

delicious strawberry guava

 i had more than my fill of these little guys. 

 it's safe to say that this hike was successful. 

to start off, i have no idea why the name mt. olympus. it's not hawaiian, and we didn't spot any olympians like michael phelps or gabby douglas; it's not the olympic mountains in washington (although, that would've been cool) or mt. olympus in greece. 

*sigh* i will always be in bewilderment. 


this hike had a lot of similarities to the royal summit we did last month. both were along a mountain ridge, up and down summits and all, but this one was A LOT more steep than the royal summit. 

the internet said it would take 4- 4.5 hours roundtrip (from the parking lot to mt. olympus), so we gauged our whereabouts on the time. accurate, right? haha no. we came to a pretty good looking summit overlooking honolulu on one side and kaneohe on the other. amazingly beautiful sights up there! no signs, but we're guessing it was mt. olympus because we made it there in exactly 2.25 hours. yes... the trail keeps going, but we turned around.

getting back down seemed to take forever, but we were able to make it back 10 minutes shy of four hours- jell-o legs and all! woohoo. 


hike stats:
-it's just under 6 miles (according to my phone)
-elevation starts at 1,050 ft & gets up to 2,332 ft
-i drank 3 liters of water, and sweat 3 liters of water (i kid, mostly)