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Re-opening the Ha‘ikū Stairs:
“Around 2002, Jeremy Harris was the mayor and he had great plans for the Valley,” John says. “This is just at the time when the Coast Guard was leaving and nobody really had decided yet who was going to be in charge of the valley. The mayor wanted the city to take over the valley and make a big park out of it, open the stairs and do all sorts of really nice things. But unfortunately, the DHHL outranked the city in terms of claiming the land. 
“And so they took it over and they were not interested in going along with the mayor’s plan at all. They didn’t want the stairs, so they deeded it over to the city. And that’s an issue that I don’t have a lot of real intimate knowledge about, but the city ended up owning it and not really knowing what to do with it. Part of part of the deal with DHHL taking over the valley was that, when they did the EIS for that, there were five structures in the Valley that were listed as potentially historical structures. Part of the contract was that DHHL had to preserve those in good condition. “The City refurbished the structure so that now they are in even better shape than original. They replaced corroded railings. There were the flat concrete areas on the top of the ridge where the antennae had been anchored. They put railings around those, which I thought was adding to the danger because when there was no railing, you were looking over the edge, looking down sixteen hundred feet and you knew very well that you should stay away from there. “Now ignorant climers are posting videos of them doing handstands on the railing. So I think the railings just added to the danger. Nobody’s fallen as far as I know. But a lot of stupid things have been done. They do a lot of GoPro Movies. The last time I counted there’s more than three hundred of them on YouTube. And some of them show people doing really ridiculous stupid dangerous things. Stunts just to show off.” 
“Once they were no longer a local secret,” Holly adds, “once they were internationally recognized as an amazing climb, then everyone knew about them. Then you can go to Google Maps and locate where you need to go quite easily with modern technology. I think we counted nine separate entrances to the stairs, including a well-known hiking trail that comes over the top of the valley, comes over the ridge and you can descend the stairs. “I’m not sure about now,” John says, “but for a while, the hikers liked the idea of them being closed, because it reduced the competition. Instead of wanting them open, they wanted to just leave it alone, leave it the way it is, because they still know how to get in and hike, so we didn’t really get support from them.” “So you have this wonderful historical structure, if you like,” Vernon says, “that has all these recreational advantages but also cultural opportunities for people. When you’re on the stairs and you look down into the valley and up towards He‘eia fish pond, it’s like you’re in a theater. I mean you’ve got grandstand seats in this theater. You can see it opens up, you can see everything. So the goal that we have, our organization, is to get the stairs reopened to the general public under some sort of managed access program, that’s really the only way it could be done. 
“But it will be a big educational component built into it, educating people about the valley and ancient Hawaiians and how they farmed and things like that. Everything just opens out in front of you. And there are several platforms if you go up the stairs, four or five I think but anyway those are ideal places to have: people can rest and then you would have your explanatory signage there so people could learn about the whole thing. So there’s enormous advantages in getting the stairs re-opened to the general public. “The situation right now is ridiculous. Despite twenty four hour security you still have people getting up there and so you know I think inevitably somebody is going to get injured on the stairs just because they’re ill prepared, they’re doing it in the middle of the night. They’re going up when the weather conditions may not be appropriate. So something probably is going to happen so it’s ridiculous to me that we don’t just have the stairs re-opened to the general public. The stairs themselves are actually incredibly safe. Despite all the rumors that get propagated, it’s probably one of the safest hikes in Hawai‘i literally. I mean, it’s a staircase with railings on two sides. You either go up or you go down, you can’t get lost. 
“I understand there is currently a thousand-dollar fine,” Holly says. “And you have to go to the Kāne‘ohe courthouse on a court date and appear in person. But nobody ever does appear in person because they have already gone back to where they came from. There’s no real incentive for anyone to turn up and pay the fine, if they’re just here for a holiday. They got their amazing climbing experience, so they’ve already got the visit they wanted. So I don’t think the fine does anything except make people take more dangerous routes to get to the bottom of the stairs. “788 eight people have been issued citations,” John adds, “twelve have been arrested since June 2014. Doesn’t say how many have been fined. But I know one person who was arrested and fined. She got in touch with me, a German lady who was at that time in Argentina. She emailed me asking me what she should do because she was fined a thousand dollars and had a date to appear before the court that was after her time to leave. So she left and went back to Argentina and she wrote me worried about what kind of trouble she was in. And there wasn’t much I could do except to call the court and ask what the deal was. They said ‘well she’s had a notice to appear so she’s in contempt of court and she'll have to pay a fine for that as well as the thousand dollars fine.’ 
“And so what I told her was if you come back and just don’t get in trouble, it’s not going to come up. If you if you come back here and don’t get a traffic ticket or something, that will never come up. But I know one other case where somebody did appear and explained that they didn’t understand that it was a serious offence, so they reduced the fine the five hundred dollars. That’s the only two actual cases that I know about.” “The plans that we have would involve just a briefing before people go off,” Vernon continues, “screening people make sure they’re wearing appropriate clothes and shoes, telling about drinking water on their own that to keep hydrated and things like that it. And people could really just enjoy it. The hike itself is spectacular. I mean, some of the pictures give you the flavor. The railings are well maintaine, and from some of those pictures you can see they’re in very good condition. 
“When they first started doing the rehabilitation back in 1992 and 2002, we started doing work days there to make it easier for the crew to get up there. There was no path, no formal path, so we built a trail and we spent two solid weekends with a large group from the hiking community to build the trail and clear it out everything make it easy for people to get up. Well, then didn’t get opened. Anyway, we kept doing that every two three months: we would go out and have a workday. I was managing the group, deciding who would go—because everybody wanted to go so I put the word out and I get fifty or sixty or one hundred people that volunteered for it. So I had to figure out who would come do it. And that’s how Holly got in on it, she got in on one of those workdays. “I have done I think five or six work days now,” Holly adds, “with the friends of Haiku Stairs and if you want a brief summary of what we do one our workdays. We all gather usually in the Community College Park and the president (of the Friends) will give a safety briefing and we all sign waivers. “It was mostly done by John Goody, I think,” Vernon recalls. “He’s an ex-marine, and I was impressed: it was a very military-style briefing that we would get, no messing around. And it was just very, very appropriate, I think. It just set the tone for the day. “It kind of raised the tension,” Holly admits, “and there’d be a group of twenty or thirty of us and every one would be checking, double checking: do we have the right hiking equipment, shoes, everything. And then we’d drive up slowly to the base the stairs with special permission, and then go in separate groups based on ability and skills.” 
“Mostly checking the stairs to see if there are any loose connections,” John points out, “tightening bolts and things like that. But mostly what was done was trying to control erosion and going in on the invasive plants species. That’s what turned out to be our major effort. We’d identify the bad guys and take steps to get rid of them.” “I’m always surprised climbing it personally,” Holly relates, “but as a teacher, it’s just affords such amazing opportunities to teach about the traditional land division system, the ahupua‘a. You can really see the whole ahupua‘a of He‘eia from the stairs. So it’s just this invaluable structure that’s already in place. Apart from it’s historic communications feat, it’s just a really amazing structure—the way it was built, the whole history of it. Too historic to destroy, I believe, but too useful also as an educational tool.” “To climb the stairs, it’s a bit of an exaggeration but it’s almost like a spiritual experience,” Vernon states. “It’s always different every time you go up, because of the weather: it can rain, clouds can come in, you can get up there and the stairs are in the clouds and then within the space of perhaps a few minutes, the skies will clear and you get spectacular views that open up. I mean anybody who’s climbed it I think, it’s a sort of experience that you’ll never forget.” |
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