Koko Crater: Hiking Our Friendly Neighborhood Volcano

What's it like to climb your local neighborhood volcano? One afternoon in mid-March, while Dan was still resting from his awful battle with the pox, I decided to find out for myself.

Koko Crater is an extinct volcano in the Hawaii Kai neighborhood of southeastern Oahu. We saw it everywhere we went that first week in Hawaii, looming in the background at our favorite coastal lookouts and rising up before us at each bend in the road.


It took some noodling for me to find the unassuming trailhead, behind a baseball field in a neighborhood park. The trail is made of railroad ties, the remains of an old tram track used by the military to haul supplies up to their hilltop positions during wartime. Now crumbling, these splintered railroad ties act like handy stairs, taking you all the way up to the crater rim.


I started up the trail, confident I was in decent winter shape for the climb. But ten minutes into the hike, I started to huff and puff. The huffing and puffing soon gave way to gasping for air. I had to stop to catch my breath.

One thing I found tricky was getting a good rhythm going up the steps. It was like climbing a staircase where the steps are spaced just a little too far apart to take them in stride, but too close together to take a full step in between. So I found myself side-stepping up the mountain, stopping now and then to take pictures and to breathe.

Soon I put the camera away, and just concentrated on taking one slow step at a time. It was here, almost halfway up Koko Crater, that I began to regret all the mussels and wine we'd enjoyed so much in New Zealand in January.

I felt like a wimp- until I noticed that my fellow hikers were all struggling too. Even the big, husky guys behind me stopped making jokes and got very quiet, as they worked their way up the trail.

Suddenly we came to an abrupt stop. Just ahead, the trail turned into a railroad trestle- with BIG spaces between the ties. I was red-faced, breathing hard, feeling a little thirsty, and was not at all sure I wanted to mince across a 30 feet ravine on a dilapidated railbed.

But there was no getting around it. So one by one we stepped gingerly, if reluctantly, across.

Now the trail got REALLY steep. I stopped turning around, afraid I'd upset my balance and risk falling backward off the trail.

Then out of the blue, a Jack Russell terrier came bounding toward me from somewhere up above. Its pony-tailed mistress, a woman in midlife wearing a designer workout ensemble, came close behind. She looked like she had wandered off a tennis court, but here she was hiking down the mountain in her running shoes. Clearly she had already made it to the top.

We stopped to chat a few minutes. It turns out she climbs the crater several times a week- to WALK HER DOG. With parting instructions to me about where to get the best views at the top, she cheerily waved and continued on her merry way.

This was all the extra mojo I needed to keep going.

Twelve hundred feet upward, and countless steps later, I was at the top. The views were amazing!

A view of Koko Head and the Hawaii Kai neighborhood, from the top of Koko Crater:


Looking down into Koko Crater, and along the southeastern coastline. You can see Sandy Beach in the middle of the photo, and Makapuu Point in the distance:


White flower on Koko Crater rim:


After taking some time to enjoy the scenery and get my heart rate under control, I started the hike down. My quads burned, but I was all smiles.

You can also check out these videos of an extreme athlete running up Koko Crater, and two women hiking at a normal pace.