In July 1987 The Honolulu Advertiser confidently reported, “Stairway to Heaven hike becomes ancient history.” The headline on the Page 4 jump read, “Haiku Valley Stairs Off-Limits for Good”

Sigh.

And here we go again, 32 years later, back for another round of the same old dance.

It’s too dangerous. Oh, but it’s so fun. Yeah, OK, we’ll hold off awhile and see if we can come up with a way to save it or get someone to step in.

Clock ticks … nothing happens … people keep climbing … another decade or two or three pass …

In 1987 the 3,922-step ladder up the windward face of the Koolau mountains was the property of the Coast Guard and drew an estimated 20,000 hikers a year. The Coast Guard had used the stairs to reach a navigational antenna at the summit, but by then was using helicopters for that work and pretty much got sick of it all when vandals yanked out three large sections of the ladder and heaved the pieces off the ridge. At that point the bosses in D.C. put their foot down.

The Coast Guard tried to get the state of Hawaii or the U.S. Park Service to kick in money to keep the stairs open to the public, estimated at $100,000 a year, but got a big no-thank-you from both.

A group of people tried to get the national parks to take over the stairs. No dice. The Advertiser wrote an editorial bemoaning the loss of what they called a “benign” hike. In fact, in the months before the Coast Guard shut down the stairs, weekend hikes of the “stairway to heaven” were advertised in the newspaper as an event sponsored by the University of Hawaii-Manoa outdoor rec program.

But in 1987 all that was coming to an end in the name of safety and liability.

And then what happened?

We all know what happened. What always happens. What happens exponentially in a world fueled by Instagram shots and the youthful bravado that nothing bad ever happens to bold and happy people.

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply ended up with the stairs, the city did make some improvements but bureaucracy set in good and tight. The broken stairs still lure adventurers with the siren call of spirituality regardless of illegality; efforts to manage the unmanageable effect of the thousands of people who tromp up there every year have been laughably lame; and once again people are casting about for a savior, some entity or perhaps a deep- pocketed developer, to swoop down like a “deus ex machina” and fix the problem.

Which points to more of the same. Hikers aren’t going to stop risking their necks on the risky stairs. Government agencies aren’t going to be thrilled about taking on that expensive liability. There likely will be enough opposition to keep anyone from dismantling the stairs, but not enough support to fix them, so it is entirely possible that decades will pass until the next time somebody declares, “This is it! No more! For real this time!”

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