Popular hike has tenants calling out for solutions

A young man wearing a gold glitter helmet rides up on a small red motorcycle. The four ladies know what he’s going to say before he says anything.

“Is this parking for the trail?”

They answer, in unison and not unkindly, “No.” Then they direct the man to find legal street parking along Mokulua Drive — if he can — and to walk from there.

To hear neighbors tell it, this is all day, every day for the area in Lanikai near the Pillbox Hike, another neighborhood on Oahu suffering from the impact of a popular tourist destination right next to their homes.

The trail, which is steep in places, unpaved, eroded and without public restrooms, leads up to old concrete military lookouts with Instagram- worthy views of the white-sand coastline, Kailua Bay and the Mokulua islands floating in the blue.

Tourists park their cars near the trailhead despite the no-parking signs, often blocking access to residents and emergency vehicles. They bring toddlers and old folks on the hike, mistakenly thinking it’ll be family-friendly and easy. Groups of revelers take up boomboxes and beverages and have all-night parties. People carry in tents and camp up there. They bring golf clubs and whack balls off the pillboxes into windows and solar panels below.

Day or night, the noise from the hikers — screaming in abandon, yelling for help or just talking — resounds from the ridgeline to the neighborhood below.

“At 3 a.m. I can hear them, and I live away from the trail on the golf course,” Annie Landrum said.

Fredese Whitsett has lived in the Bluestone condominiums for 12 years, the last eight in the unit closest to the trailhead. The trail is so badly eroded that sometimes hikers lose their way and end up stuck in the bushes right outside her back door. They yell for help when they’re too exhausted or injured to climb the chain-link fence to get out.

“This is, above all, an issue of safety,” Whitsett said.

Neighbors say there are rescue operations nearly every week. They see firefighters carrying people down the steep trail; they hear rescue helicopters flying right over their roofs.

“We hear helicopters so often, people no longer come out to see what’s happening,” said neighbor Lin Sue Rutledge. She’s been keeping track of the number of rescues in the area reported to the neighborhood board. Sometimes it’s more than once a week. Sometimes people get badly injured and there have been several deaths.

It didn’t used to be like this. People have enjoyed the hike up Kaiwa Ridge for generations, but in the last 2-1/2 years it’s turned into what Whitsett calls “the Wild West up there.” Its popularity is probably due to social media and all the posts that assure it’s an easy hike with the best view ever. Japanese websites about visiting Hawaii promote the hike. And of course, President Obama hiked the Pillbox Trail, though the neighbors are quick to say, “Oh, we don’t blame him. We love Obama.”

Actually, these neighbors aren’t focused on blaming anybody for their troubles.

“We all love Hawaii,” said Ruth Carlson, who has lived at Bluestone for 11 years. “We certainly understand why people love the hike. We’re not saying, ‘Don’t come.’ But we need some help.”

The situation is complicated with various landowners and easements. The trail is on state land, but the road leading up to the trailhead is private.

“What I would like to see, both for Pillbox and for places like Maunawili and Haiku, is special rules for maintaining hiking trails and access when the trails are in neighborhoods,” Whitsett said.

For now they try to endure this burden on the quiet neighborhood. Whitsett keeps fans on at night for white noise. Rutledge bought a box of earplugs. They plan ahead to hunker down at home during holiday weekends when all of Lanikai is overrun with beachgoers and Pillbox hikers and it can take an hour to drive a little over a mile from Lanikai to Kailua. But even on quiet days that trampled, eroded trail is always open, and rarely quiet.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.