Help Repair the Kalalau
Trail
In June
of 2007, Bill Summers followed a family hiking the Kalalau Trail. As they wound
their way down the eroding switchback from Hanakoa to the treacherous
Pohakukumano point, he noted that the lack of maintenance made the trail
unnecessarily dangerous. He resolved to leave his work as a stonemason in
Florida, and devote his time and savings to repairing the trail. Since June, he
has been working on the trail and living near the helicopter pad by Mile 8.
Every two weeks, he hikes out for supplies and mail.
The trail around Pohakukumano
If you
have hiked the trail since June, you may have seen his handiwork. Among other
things, he dug out and shored up that switchback. He widened the narrowest
section around Pohakukumano. Near the Kalalau campground, he noticed that some
returning hikers would mistakenly take a level "trail" instead of the
switchback up the red dirt out of the Kalalau Valley. To make the real trail
more obvious to hikers, he cut steps into the beginning of the switchback. In
another part of the trail, rain runoff had eroded a deep stream around a corner
of the trail. He broke apart two boulders, and used the resulting 4-6” rocks to
fill the ditch to slow the water and erosion. Throughout the trail, he has
beveled the path so that water runs off instead of forming streams following
the path.
Bill Summers
In
September, I met Bill at the Hanakoa Campground as he was returning with
supplies. I learned of his work, and found out that he could only continue his
efforts for nine more months because he will have exhausted his life’s savings.
I volunteered to create this web page to help. If you would like to help
support Bill’s effort, simply send him a check:
Bill Summers
c/o Wainiha General Store
P.O. Box 164
Hanalei, HI 96714
You can
see more photos of his efforts at Kalalau Repair Photos.
Mahalo,
Sean Davis