Along the Trail
The Hawaiian Trail & Mountain Club Newsletter
October - November - December 2006
NEW T-SHIRTS AVAILABLE NOW
The New edition of the HTMC T-shirt and sport shirt are now available to order. Please check the enclosed flyer to make your selection and payment.
SCHEDULING HIKES
Stuart Ball
The Scheduling Committee recently explored ways to better schedule hikes to help the trail maintenance crew. After some discussion we decided to:
1. Reduce the number of hikes requiring moderate to heavy trail maintenance to a manageable number that can be handled by the crew on Sundays only.
2. Schedule those hikes regularly, so that each trail receives a haircut about once a year.
We first determined that the club needs 80 active hikes in total – 50 Sundays, 23 Saturdays (1/2 of the Sunday total, less 2 not scheduled in December), and 7 additional hikes (10% of 73) for scheduling flexibility. The 80 hikes do not include specialty hikes, such as Treasure Hunt, Ulupau Head, Kaukonahua Float etc.
With Mabel’s help, we then identified the hikes requiring the trail maintenance crew and decided that there should be only 50 of them. Also only 27 (1/3) of the 80 should be members only hikes.
The ten Scheduling Committee members then picked their best 80 hikes out of the current list of 125. Note that some of the hikes on the list were inactive, specialty, or variations of the same hike, so we did not actually eliminate 45 hikes. Hikes receiving six or more votes automatically made the new active list. We then picked some of the five-vote hikes to reach our goal of 80 in total, 50 requiring trail maintenance, and 27 members only. Hikes not making the cutoff went on the inactive list.
Moving forward, we will attempt to maintain the 80-50-27 ratio. If we develop a new hike or move an inactive hike to the active list, we will remove a similar hike from the active list. That will encourage us to compare hikes and weigh the value of each. We began using the new active list for the first quarter 2007.
If you have questions or comments, do not hesitate to contact me, or any member of the Scheduling Committee.
CLUB PROMOTION
Richard McMahon
On a recent hike up Pu`u O Hulu on the Wai`anae side, hike coordinator Larry Lee gave the best “recruitment” speech I have heard in a long time. After the usual pre-hike briefing, Larry presented a brief history of the club, discussed its varied current activities, and informed prospective members how to join. It was short, interesting, and well received. It made me think that it would be a great idea if other hike coordinators followed Larry’s example. I’m sure he would be happy to share his thoughts.
WALKING THROUGH TSAVO
[Last year, a small group of HTMC members enjoyed a walking safari in Africa. For those who were unable to attend the slide show at the club house, and for readers wanting more information on the journey, John Hall has written a day-by-day account of the adventure. The first installment begins below.]
A Diary of an Eleven Day Walk through some of the World's Greatest Wildlife Country
by John B. Hall
In June, 2005, four members of the Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club, Deetsie Chave, Bill Gorst, John Hall, and Peter Kempf, flew to Africa to join a walking safari across the 8300 square mile expanse of West and East Tsavo National Parks in Kenya. We were joined there by Norah Naughton, an anesthesiologist from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Michael Ghiglieri, the organizer of the group and his wife, Susan, a psychologist, both of Flagstaff, Arizona. Our guide for the walk, and Founder and Managing Director of Tropical Ice, the only tour company authorized to conduct walking tours of this big game area, was Iain Allan. Iain is British but has spent most of his life in Kenya and has been leading adventure tours into this country for at least 25 years. Three of us from Hawai'i are in our early 70's, while the youngest is 65. Nora, Michael, and Susan are younger.
We spent a night in Macushla, a charming guest house that had once been the headquarters for a coffee estate, I suspect, and then flew to Tsavo West. Our first stop was at Mzima Springs, where ground water wells to the surface in great springs that form the headwaters of the Tsavo River. This is a visitor attraction and the pools formed by the springs are full of hippos and surrounded by fever trees and other acacias. There is an underwater view port where visitors can see the fish and whatever else comes close enough in the murky water. After an hour or so at the Springs, our party drove south to our first camp, further down the Tsavo River.
For those used to backpacking, Mzima Camp was quite luxurious. We found large, walk‑in, 2‑person tents with twin cots, each with mattress, pillows, sheets, and a quilt. There was a bed table and wastebasket, and each of the four walls had two large windows screened with fine, no-see-um- proof netting. Both ends would unzip to form doors, and in front was a lanai with roof and floor, two folding stools, a table covered with a cloth and on it a kerosene lamp, mirror, water bottle, and two bars of soap.
At each corner of the lanai was a tripod holding a wash basin with frequently renewed water, and a large bath towel. Behind every pair of tents was a latrine, a typical outhouse made of canvas on a metal frame and containing a square metal sheet on folding legs with a toilet seat mounted in its center. A hole about a foot in diameter and 18 inches deep was strategically located beneath this, and some of the dirt from the hole along with a bricklayer's trowel lay beside it. After making any solid deposit, we were asked to cover the same with a little of this dirt.
A low wood platform with kerosene lantern and water basin and soap was adjacent. There was also a shower cubical, of similar construction but with a raised wooden grid covered with rubber matting on the floor and pockets in the canvas side for soap. A 5-gallon canvas tank that could be raised and lowered by a pulley and had a shower head operated by a lever supplied water for showers. With some consideration, two people could easily take a shower from each filling of the tank. Camp workers were assiduous in keeping the tank filled with hot water, despite the fact that the air temperature was quite warm enough, Iain holding the dubious belief that in the tropics, hot food and hot showers cool you off! Fortunately, the water had usually had a chance to cool somewhat by the time I showered. All of this would be disassembled on our departure at 7:00 am every morning, trucked around to the next camp site (sometimes by a very circuitous route), and largely reassembled again by the time we arrived at 12:00 or 1:00 pm.
Day 1
The next day we were up and on the trail a little after 7:00 am. We followed the course of the Tsavo River as it flowed east. Along the river there were large trees ‑ doum palms, an interesting fan palm that branches, unlike most palms, and fever trees, a kind of large acacia with green bark. Other acacias and a few other kinds of trees could also be found here. The course of the river could always be seen from some distance because of the line of these trees.
Away from the river the land was quite arid. There were a few widely scattered acacia trees, but few were more than 20 or 30 feet high, and the landscape was dominated by thorny scrub. There was a great deal of bare soil and only sparse grass and other herbage. The spring rainy season supposedly had ended only a few weeks ago, yet the grass was already yellow and dry and didn't look as if it had seen much water for months. The hippos are said to require about 200 lbs of fodder, mostly grass, a night to maintain their weight, and I was hard put to see how they could find this much in such a desolate landscape. They range up to 2 miles from the river during a night's foraging, and I think they must have had to hustle to get this much to eat. None‑the‑less, this unpromising country manages to support a great deal of wildlife.
The tracks the hippos follow from the river to the feeding grounds in the distance are quite obvious. Even in sandy washes, where there is no clear reason to prefer one path over another, they seem to stick to a single track, and this is a narrow, double-rutted trail with a 6 or 8 inch wide groove on each side separated by a 4 inch hump in the middle. A very narrow road for such a wide animal!
We had no established trail to follow. Animal trails (and dung) were everywhere, but rarely led in the direction we wanted to take. A tall, gaunt Samburu named Mohammed led the party, weaving through the thornbush, ducking and twisting and dodging to avoid protruding twigs. At least half the bushes had thorns, many of them 3 inches long, at least, although the nastiest ones were those with small, recurved thorns hidden among their sparse leaves, that would cling to your clothes at the slightest touch until the entire stem was wrapped along an arm or leg and had to be carefully detached. Most of these thorn bushes were some kind of acacia, I think. There was also a variety of thornless shrubs with healthy green leaves. I assume that these must have been poisonous or had a nasty taste or both, to survive so well in such a hostile environment in which there seemed to be a host of hungry animals ready to eat anything that grew or moved.
As the day progressed it grew hot. We saw hippos occasionally as our path led by the waters edge, and once or twice we startled a small herd of impalas. I noticed some curious scratching in the dirt from time to time ‑ a pattern of small scratches about 8 inches long radiating out from a central mound on which a heap of tiny pellets, like miniature goat droppings was placed. This was the territorial mark of the dikdik, an elegant, delicate little chihuahua‑sized antelope that we rarely saw while on foot, but often observed from the landrover. Near the river there were also the fiber‑covered seeds of the doum palm. Freshly fallen, these have a rather tough, fleshy coat that is relished by the baboons and the elephants. In fact, the seeds seem to germinate best after they have passed through the digestive system of an elephant.
We reached our second camp, Kudu Camp, a little after noon. It was none too soon for me ‑ the heat, exercise, and residual time lag made this the hardest day of the walk as far as I was concerned. The men had set up the tents, including a dining tent which was open at both ends and large enough to hold a long table capable of seating a dozen people. We ate a large, cooked lunch and then retired for naps and relaxation. English tea and biscuits were served at 4:00 pm. After tea, the usual routine was to get in the land rover and drive along some of the rough jeep roads on this side of the river to see the animals.
It is possible to get much closer to most of the game in a vehicle than on foot, as the animals seem to think that you are just some sort of elephant and do not flee. This allowed us to get a good, close‑up look at many of them, but seemed less exciting than seeing them on foot on more equal terms. About 6:00 we would return to camp for a shower, and change into a wrap-around, lava‑lava‑like skirt that Iain furnished for each of us, a traditional relaxation costume in Kenya, I gather. There was a campfire (totally unneeded for warmth, but perhaps useful in warning the animals away) and we pulled chairs into an arc, at a distance, before it and had pupu's and drinks while the 8:00 pm dinner was prepared. After a hardy dinner, it was time for bed ‑ especially since I got up at 5:00 am every morning to be ready for our 7:00 am start. A simple breakfast of fruit, cornflakes, juice, coffee, tea, and toast etc. was on the table for us to choose from by about 6:00 am.
Day 2
Our order of march was as follows: Mohammed, with a rifle led, followed by another Samburu pastoralist‑warrior with a spear and machete. Then Iain with another rifle and the 5 guests, all in a line. Michael and Susan came next, with two more Samburu, one with a spear and another with a rifle bringing up the rear. We maintained absolute silence in order to increase our chances of detecting any dangerous animal, such as a Cape buffalo or a hippo sleeping in the bush, before it was aware of us.
Even those who tended to chatter in camp were speechless on the trail. Iain also insisted that we stay strictly in a line, so if he had to swing around suddenly and fire at a threat from side or rear, none of us would be in the way. One time, when I was right behind him, he went around one side of a pile of dung in the path and I chose to go around the other. He caught the deviation out of the corner of his eye, and motioned me back into line!
We had been walking for an hour or so when we spotted a lesser kudu a hundred yards away. It stood and watched us for a moment, and I could make out its profile ‑ a deer‑like head with big ears. If we had been in the Rockies, I'd have sworn it was a mule deer. Our course led for a ways along the river. At one point we could hear a thrashing in the stream, and when we came to a place where the bank was low, a hippopotamus burst out of the water with a shower of spray and charged directly at us! We had been told to stay behind Iain in such circumstances, and the person in front of me, Bill, I think, and I immediately began to run forward to get behind him. I heard two shots, and when I turned around, Iain was slightly above and behind us on the bank, and the hippo had turned and was running for the water. Apparently, the agreement was that the two Samburu would fire over the head of the animal when this sort of thing happened, and if that did not discourage it, Iain stood ready to shoot it with his rifle. Fortunately, it was not necessary this time.
In 25 years of leading walks in this area, Iain says that he has had to kill 5 animals, all of them hippos. So much for the vaunted reputations of the irascible Cape buffalo, the man‑eating lion, or the rogue elephant! According to Iain, these animals are almost always anxious to avoid a confrontation if they are given the space to retreat. It is only when they feel trapped that they are dangerous. Hippos are different. The one that attacked us probably had young in the herd and the females become very touchy when that is the case. She was apparently annoyed by our presence and was following us along the stream looking for a place where she could climb out and go after us.
One reason why we wait until 7:00 am to begin the walks is to give the hippos time to return to the river after a night's foraging. If you come between a hippo and the river, it feels very threatened and will charge immediately. Why an animal that has no natural predators should be so touchy is an interesting question. Perhaps 10,000 years ago or so, there were larger flesh-eaters in Africa that could attack a hippo. Hippos are quite unpredictable, and although they are strict vegetarians, they have huge mouths and formidable tusks and can bite a person in two when annoyed, a state which they seem to experience frequently.
One of Iain's worst experiences on these walking tours occurred while the group was crossing a small gully that ran down to the river. Unexpectedly, a hippo burst out of the water and charged them. Most of the people were part way up the far bank and scrambled on to the top, but one fellow tripped and fell, spread- eagled right in the middle of the wash. The hippo stopped right on top of him, one leg over his shoulder, another by his ribs, but none touching him. The animal seemed oblivious to his presence as it glared upward at the people on the bank as if wondering how to get at them. The man's wife turned to Iain with a shrug and said, "There goes husband number three!". Iain was in a severe quandary ‑ he wanted desperately to save the man, but if he shot the hippo it would probably collapse right on the chap and crush him. Finally, the animal turned and walked back to the river without harming the him in the slightest.
Other animals can be dangerous on occasion, of course. Iain told a story of how he was once charged by a Cape buffalo. He was leading a party through a relatively safe section of Tsavo when they came to a rocky hill. Some of the people wanted to climb the hill for the view and others did not, so the assistant guide, who had the only rifle in the party, took the climbers up the hill while Iain led the rest through a patch of the hooked‑thorn type of bush and out into an open area. Suddenly, a Cape buffalo stood up on the far side of the field and started to charge toward them. The party scattered and Iain said he could hear clothes and skin being shredded as they plunged through the thornbush. He had once been told by an older colleague in the Park that if attacked by an animal while unarmed, the best defense is offense ‑ attack yourself. So he began to run toward the buffalo, clapping his hands as hard as he could, since a clap is the one sound no other animal can make and it bemuses and disconcerts them. Fortunately, when the buffalo came within 10 yards, it did veer off and run away. Iain's hands were black and blue for weeks afterwards. Later, when Iain told of this experience to his friend, the older man nodded his head sagely and said, "I just KNEW that would work!"
There was a long ridge, a line of steep, cliffed hills and volcanic cones of the Ngulia Range across the river from us in this section. The camp people had to cross the river and make a long detour around these hills to get to our next camp site, which would be on the other side of the river. There were also hills, low, but with rugged, rocky summits on our side also. These were the home of the rock hyrax, a small, wood chuck‑like animal whose ancestors once dominated the herbivore fauna of Africa, and one line of which gave rise to their nearest existing relatives, the elephants!
We also saw several giraffes in the distance during this day's walk. Signs of elephants were abundant. Elephants will bite off the ends of low fronds of the doum palm and chew them up, but they do not eat them. The shredded mass is dropped and often found along the trail ‑ a sort of elephant dental floss that helps to clean the teeth, perhaps?
By 12:00 or so, we could see our next camp, Kichwa Tembo Camp, across the river. We had noticed the occasional crocodile along the river banks, and some of these were quite large. The water was very muddy, and animals that came down to drink were very hesitant and wary, since they could never be sure that a croc was not waiting to lunge out and grab them.
We were told not to use stepping stones to cross the river (not that I ever saw any that would have been suitable) because this was the only way the baboons could cross it, and the crocs knew this and were always on the lookout for any animal hopping from stone to stone. Iain's theory was that by staying together and making a lot of noise and big splashes, the crocs would assume that we were elephants, which they won't try to attack, and leave us alone. It seemed like a somewhat tenuous hypothesis to me, but it worked for us. And I don't have to test it ever again!
Anyway, we took off our boots and crossed, and the men met us on the opposite bank with a basin of water to wash off our feet and to dry them with a towel, and then helped us get our feet back into our shoes while they were still clean. And so to lunch, rest, etc. for the second day. We had to keep our tents zipped up when we left them in this camp, since a troop of vervet monkeys lived in the doum palms here and were always ready to pry into anything left unattended.
[To be continued]
FRS RADIOS
Steve Brown
The board would like to forward a strong recommendation for the use of FRS radios. They have proved invaluable in recent emergency situations during our hikes and trail maintenance events. They provide the security of being able to contact other members of the group in case of an accident, injury, or loss of direction.
There are some negative aspects of the radios, however. They have limited range, either 2 or 5 miles, depending on the radio, and are generally limited to line-of-sight (you can’t communicate with someone on the other side of the ridge). They may be perceived as an easy solution to any problem which may occur. This perception is wrong. They should be viewed as a tool, and not as a substitute for common sense.
It’s critical that all hikers be on the same channel and sub-channel. For HTMC hikes this is channel 7, and sub-channel 14.
Turn the radio on while hiking. The coordinator may have an urgent communication for the group, for example, “A flash flood is coming. Stay out of the stream”.
Radio use should be limited to essential communications. Random chatter degrades the wilderness experience for all who are forced to listen to it.
Remember –
- Turn it on.
- Channel 7, Sub-Channel 14
- No idle chit-chat
NEWSLETTER SUBMISSIONS
ALONG THE TRAIL is a quarterly publication of the Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club designed to inform the membership of club activities and matters of interest to the hiking community. HTMC members and any other interested parties are welcome to submit articles to ALONG THE TRAIL. Submissions must be received by the 5th day of March, June, September, and December in order to appear in the newsletter published for the quarter, and may be sent in any of the following ways (email preferred):
email: richard27@hawaii.rr.com
FAX: 293-2554
Phone: 293-2554
Mail: Richard McMahon
57-531 Kamehameha Hwy
Kahuku, HI 96731
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Hawaiian Trail & Mountain Club
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