The Stairway to Heaven

They graciously allowed me, the introvert, to take advantage of some alone time as they sat as a pair, chatting and channel changing, and I took a seat sitting next to a stranger. 

Headphones in, book on lap, eyes averted from the stranger next to me as to not encourage any sort of conversation whatsoever, the plane slowly decended and I watched Meg, sitting next to our mom, curiously looking out of the window and I wondered what she was thinking. For nine whole days, she would be childless and without a partner, experiencing a new life -  my life - without any responsibility, meeting new personalities and pushing herself far beyond her comfort zone. She would feel what I feel each time I travel to a new place, and I was so dang excited for her.

But, the thrill of saying yes to a new adventure and seeing new lifestyles and essentially being responsibly free, I knew, was overshadowed by other things. I pushed Meg into this trip. My mom and I originally discussed this trip, any trip, really. I have gone on many adventures solo, but it was only through the support of my sisters and my mom's words that pushed me to say yes to that first big adventire to Peru in 2012, when she blatently told me it was time to quit my [shitty] job and travel, as I've always wanted to do. So, I asked if she wanted to come along on a trip with me and I suggested Oahu, Hawaii. I found an old email thread between my old friend Amber from 2015 (she once told me Asia will change my life. It did) about wanting to complete a hike in Hawaii. 

The Haiku Stairs, more commonly known as the Stairway to Heaven, was built in 1942 by the U.S. Navy as a top-secret facility for transmitting radio signals to ships that were sailing in the Pacific Ocean. After this, the stairs were left to rust and allow nature to take over. In 2002 the government planned to invest money into these stairs to fix them and turn them into a tourist destination, but politics got involved and this purposal was put to an end. Since then, climbing the Stairway to Heaven is forbidden, illegal even, with a security guard given the ability to fine trespassers up to $1000 USD. I've always wanted to take the legal route, a round about 16.6km round trip through the rainforest, which leads to the stairs and take the illegal way down.

My mom was instantly up for the adventure to Oahu and even insisted on it when I mentioned my hesitancy due to the costs with the high American dollar. Megan heard about the trip and showed interest and I booked us three flights for April, 2022. But traveling across North America was not small feat. Meg hadn't left Canada for eight years, before my two small nieces were born, and she had to maneuver her and Justin's schedule, as he was working the camp life every other week. We were still not quite at the tail end of COVID (are we even now?), and the idea of cramming herself in a tin can plane and going from a underpopulated small town into an overcrowded island pushed her to her tipping point. After three attempts at backing out I coerced her into coming. So yeah, as we decended into Ohau, I thought about what Meg was thinking about.

After a minor hiccup with a car rental and a lack of car insurance, solved by local beverages on the sidewalk, we took an Uber to our Airbnb located a street from the ocean front. To my insistence, we walked allot. To my surprise, they agreed, with the exception of a trip from the grocery store - mom loudly put her foot down with the fourteenth blocks with our hands full that we'd bus it. The streets were thriving with friendly locals and happy tourists. Each day we ordered Hawaiian lattes from a local Cafe 3.5 kms from our residents. With the expense of Canadian prices but in American dollars we ate in with the exception of one meal a day. Still when I eat hummus and crackers I think of Hawaii.

Initially I had planned to pay $150 USD to join a guided trek up the Stairway to Heaven. But after chatting with my mom and Meg about the hike, and Meg finding a few few YouTube videos about it, they said they wanted to come with, with two conditions: no guide (hello expensive) and leaving early to beat the heat. Reluctantly I agreed. I was worried about hiking such a long way on uncharted territory and in the dark. Mag assured us we could use a GPS map on her phone and for nearly a day we were on a mission to find headlamps.

We started on the trailhead at 3:30am. Forcing down egg sandwiches and switching on headlamps we went up a gravel path surrounded by trees. A small break in the trees told Meg (being directionally challenged I had no bloody idea) that this was the way up. The trail systems got steeper and the tree roots got gnarlier, creating ankle breakers in the darkness. We stopped often to catch our breath. Meg noted my quietness and gave voice to my fear about getting lost by promising that we were following the electronic map on her phone. Finally a definite trail appeared as we popped out of the forest and started the climb surrounding by low bushes, tall grass and spaced out trees.  Megan was insistent that it was too early to eat, but at my insistence that she's never walked this far in a day let alone what she's accomplished before six am, we stopped for food, trading feelings of how hard this is, how tired we are, but how pretty it will be. I vocalized thoughts of turning around when we hit one of many of the ridges. It was still so dark, and the only thing the headlamp did was poorly outine the skinny path and show deep darkness on either sides of the trail, indicating a long fall down. Meg and mom rejected my concerns and with the wind teedering us back and forth from the safety of the trail, we pushed on. With the sunrise came the shockingly beautiful knowledge of where we were. The mountains that surrounded us were luscious and green, with many climbing well into the clouds. We found ourselves in the middle of a rainforest with views I've never seen without looking at a photo.

Some steep sections required the help of rope, which made me question what I talked my family into. At one point a long legged European man passed us and we exchanged tired but happy smiles. As the slow assent continued up we literally climbed into clouds. Our skin, and everything within our environment, turned damp. We came upon a steep section of very few rocks through the dirt trail. With the dew and clouds turning dust into mud, the trail seemed impassable, but we overcame it with souvenirs of sticky mud on our whole lower body. Soon after, infront of us stood yet another slippery muddy section, which looked more relatable to deep rutts carved by heavy rain fall than a popular trail system. As the path slimmed out, it reavealed nothing but cliffsides on each side, where there was a rope halfway through the steep mudslide almost mocking us. Meg went first, with her sneakers only sliding down the thick gunk of a dirt floor. When the sides of mountain skinnied into a slinky path, it exposed nothing but cliff faces on either side, and she had had enough. Despite the pleads from our up-for-anything mum (one time Mike's BFF voiced that our mom sounded more fun than me and I just sat there and agreed), I told mom enough.

Megan, a person who, despite my attempts, does not hike. Will not hike. She just does not like it. And yet somehow, I found her 7.5km up a mountain, in a whole other country, during a global pandemic, without her two girls for the first time in a very long time. I told mom that she pushed out of her comfort zone beyond anything I could ever imagine myself actually doing. She knows her limit and it's now. At Megan's insistence, mom and I continued up the mountain. 

We ran into a couple who said we were about forty minutes from the top. At that point I knew we needed to turn around. The heat was only increasing and to leave Meg for 1.5 hours without any sort of communication (especially since all three of us assumed we would be back to her long before then) was simply unfair. My mom, knowing this was a life-list adventure, asked me if I was sure. She asked me if I would regret not touching those stairs. I told her I would not. And that's the truth. I still don't.

Mom and I turned around and headed down the mountain and reached Meg. On the way down we captured more photos and saw the beauty of the hike we missed in the 3:30am blackness. The European and his insanely long legs caught up to us and passed us yet again. For only a moment, I felt some saddness of not making it to the top, of not seeing the stairs for myself. He must have know my inside thoughts because he smiled and said the top wasn't even worth it, as the stairs we're virtually unrecognizable with the dense cloud coverage blocking the view. I smiled back as he passed us.

This adventure, which first started as the simple desire to walk down the illegal and abandoned stairs morphed into pushing all of us beyond our limits, at times our patients with three similar, independent and vocal women. The vacation evolved into a trip with fun memories of Meg and I trying and then failing at surfing, as a snowboarder, it was humbling as heck. Just the other day, we chatted about how fun it was to visit a fellow Northern BC friend, who just happened to also be visiting Hawaii. I am still surpried as Meg found another hike only a day or so after the Stairway to Heaven with three waterfalls that ended on the rim of a volcano, and pushed us to hike it. A bruse stained my ass for two weeks after I fell flat on my bottom at the beginning of this hike where we had to climb down the boulders and back into the rainforest. Of all the adventures throughout my life, this was one of my favorites.

Kirstin

Go wild for a while