Step Carefully

Think of the most precarious trail you’ve ever hiked. Narrow it to the width of a shoebox. Sluice torrents of water down the trail and transform it into rivulets of mud. Mud that seeps into your shoes, hides your ankles, and creases behind your knees. Now picture relentlessly thick vegetation, so that each step is a negotiation with the unseen ground below. Imagine climbing through that rich brown mud and bladed greenery for dozens of miles, feet slipping, hands grasping for slimy tree roots. Then set all this on a knife-blade ridge that scrapes the clouds and plummets well over a thousand feet on either side.

If and when you do lift your eyes from the trail, you’ll see emerald green peaks shrouded in mist and the turquoise Pacific Ocean winking in the distance, fringes of white surf frothing the beaches. It looks for all the world like paradise found and never lost, Shangri-La, perhaps, or Jurassic Park without the velociraptors.

Oahu’s Koolau Mountains are home to what might be the most challenging