Kipapa Gulch

Growing up, I always heard about the Kipapa Gulch hauntings with the lady in white who walks across the bridge (between Mililani and Waipio), the fallen menehune warriors (a battle between King Malikukahi and warriors from Maui and the Big Island) who haunt the land and the night marchers who chant and can be seen marching the land with torches…
There’s an access point to Kipapa Gulch behind Hanalani Schools (if you’re on the left side of the softball/​baseball fence), you can see a winding dirt trail that leads to a semi-​steep hill, which takes you down to a small stream at the bottom. Some of my high school friends used to play airsoft/​paintball around the stream because of all the trees and huge boulders. This is a nice spot to relax and have lunch or grab some nice photos.
My friends and I decided to go hiking down here once, and it was quite the adventure… We mapped it out and planned for a 5K hike. The dirt pathway had huge california grass on both sides, and we came across what looked like an old military bunker… We couldn’t see what was inside, so we proceeded on… the outlined hike from
seemed to be nothing like what we were seeing, and constantly found ourselves having to slide down to the stream bank and scale the side while holding on to exposed tree roots to prevent us from falling into the water. The tail got really muddy and right when we were almost to the end of the marked trail, we pushed through the tall grass and came face-​to-​face with a ledge with a drastic plunge (all we could see was treetops and had no idea what the depth was)…*phew* at least we didn’t slip down that…
We had to regroup and knew we wouldn’t be able to backtrack the whole hike (because the sun had started to set)…We studied our map and backtracked about half-​a-​mile and started to climb up the hill… and somehow, we ended up in the middle of Kamehameha Highway, and walked on the side of the road till we made our way back to Hanalani Schools (so glad I wasn’t going to need to see any night marchers or ghosts that night).
Definitely stop by and see the stream though… as far as the hike… maybe cut that in half or stop when you come across a point where you’re only option to move forward is scaling the stream bank.