Ryan's Chang: Fern Gully

In a valley near Kahaluu lies a waterfall not many people see. It lies behind a gated community and you can't see a waterfall from the road unless its raining and flash flooding.

Since my friend Josh got back from his recent trip to Kauai over the summer I was itching to hike with him and talk story about his internship over the summer on Kauai.

Along with us on the hike was Baron, Katie and Darren. We all decided to go here because they wanted to see if the trail was still hike able and not overgrown.

We started on a well maintained trail and contoured and came to the terminus of this trail and made our way down into pine trees. We hit a section of strawberry guava and there was barely a discernible trail left. Luckily we had a GPS and the track from the last time Josh and Baron came. We followed the GPS track and cut away some of the strawberry guava.

We came to a section uluhe and bamboo which the trail was still intact and easy to push through.

After the bamboo section we got to the stream and followed it up. There was a left and right fork that both had streams flowing. Along the stream there was plenty Pohole ferns. Usually Pohole ferns don't grow on Oahu because they need a lot of water to grow. Most of the Pohole in the supermarkets come from farms on the Big Island.

We followed the stream to the terminus at a waterfall. Kalo was growing in the stream and also Mamaki. There was a dry chute above this waterfall which means that the water flowing down the face of it usually is a pool or a spring. Left of this falls was a dry chute as well with a lot of ferns growing on the face of it.

We hung out took pictures and ate lunch below the falls. We decided after lunch that we go check out the right fork and go see what's up there.

After taking the right fork and following the steam for ten to fifteen minutes we came to a gigantic dry waterfall chute. It looked to be one of the biggest dry chutes I had ever seen, even bigger than the sacred falls left side chute. The water flowing in the stream was also coming from a spring flowing right out of the ground. We were all impressed with what we saw that day.