 Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. Hawaii is my mainland on every Friday at 3 p.m. My name is Jodi Malinowski and I am the Oahu group coordinator for the Sierra Club of Hawaii. Kauai Lucas and the Think Tech Ohana have graciously allowed the Sierra Club Oahu group to guest host Hawaii is my mainland for the next few weeks so that we can discuss some of the environmental issues our organization is championing. Today we're going to discuss our outings program and the trail issues facing Oahu. Joining me is our guest Randy Ching a superstar volunteer with the Sierra Club Oahu group and an outings leader for nearly 25 years. Welcome Randy. Randy the Sierra Club is an environmental nonprofit organization that has been operating nationally for 125 years. Can you talk a little bit about the history of the Sierra Club and what the mission statement is? Okay so about 125 years ago there was a guy named John Muir and he hiked across America basically with cup of tea and alofa bread and so he fell in love with the Sierra Navadas which he called the range of light and he started the Sierra Club basically to protect the Sierra Navadas so that's why they call it the Sierra Club and that was in 1892 and the club has been around now for 125 years. It's been doing environmental work and mostly people know it as a hiking club even though we we do a lot of conservation advocacy lobbying they know us as a hiking club a lot of people here and the mission of the club is to explore and join protect the wild places of the planet. Great and next year the Sierra Club of Hawaii is going to be 50 years old so I know we're going to celebrate with a couple of a weekend long of events including some hiking and some camping and a big fundraiser at Kualoa Ranch so really excited about that. So speaking of hiking we're going to talk today about one of our most popular programs which is our outings program and tell us what is the outings program all about? Okay so our outings program is a program where we take people into the wilderness into nature we usually have a hike or a service project every weekend and it's led by volunteers who are trained as outings leaders according to the National Sierra Club requirements and so I've been an outings leader for about 23 24 years now and so in that time I've probably led several hundred hikes and service projects it's a it's a way to get people connected again with nature and it's something that we feel that follows in the tradition of John Muir who basically said you get people out into the forest get them out into the wilderness they learn to love it and if they learn to love it they will fight to protect it so that's really John Muir's philosophy is get people outside outdoors get them into nature so that they'll learn to love it and anything they love they can they will protect. So let's see some of these photos here these are recent photos from the Oahu group outings. Yeah so this is at the top of Nuuanu trail where it comes up from the judge trail and so this is where it starts flattening out and if you were to go from here out towards Pali Highway it's basically about a mile until you get to the overlook which is where people like to have a lunch break and you can look down on the Nuuanu Reservoir so this is a really nice place it's got a cool breeze and I'd say about hmm maybe a couple hundred feet above where you when you come into the judge trail and you start this is about maybe 300 feet elevation gain. Cool do we have other photos that we can show of our hikes? Okay so this is kind of a point it's a natural reserve if you look in the at the background you'll see a predator-proof fence and people enter through that little structure that has two gates and the reason they have two gates is because if you have a person who goes in with only one gate somebody something can sneak in through the gate so they put the second gate in there so that when you close the first gate nothing can sneak in and it worked really well in New Zealand so we just basically stole this idea from New Zealand and this is a group of people doing a service party out there with Kaleen who's the outings leader there so I'm guessing they probably did a little bit of weeding maybe a little bit of planting as well all right and this is Coco Crater Botanical Garden and we usually have one outing a year here so that people could see what's in the crater it's one of the biggest botanical gardens and a lot of people who live here and who are born and raised here don't even know that this garden exists. Yeah this was a photography hike so yeah a lot of different things that the outings group does. Yeah the photography hikes are great because you get to go as slow as you like to take as many pictures as you like. This is Kaniyia Marine Corps base this is the Lupea ponds and this is mangrove removal. Every place else in the mainland mangroves are really they try to maintain them try to hold on to it because they buffer against wave action and storms but in Hawaii it's kind of a nuisance and it makes it hard to do a restoration of the ponds for the fish and the birds so they the service project here is to just basically remove them. It's not easy I've done it many times and it's hard work. Yeah yeah. This is at the top of Puuma LA for those of you don't know where it is it's a temple valley in the back of the townhouses. It's about a 500 foot elevation game kind of steep but once you get to the top you some great views of the windward side. Yeah so these are just photos from the past couple of months from our outings team so Sierra Club Oahu group has really been instrumental in maintaining some of these trails. I know we built like Kulio O Ridge you spent two years working on Kulio O? Well I didn't build it but I helped maintain it. For two years you put steps in? Well three years. I put in many hundreds of steps. Yeah not by myself hundred percent but most of the steps were put in by me. I had a lot of help though from Sierra Club volunteers yeah. So we lead weekly hikes basically around the entire island. Yeah pretty much. The last five or six years we've been more on the Kuala Lumpur side. We used to do a lot of work out on the Waianae Mountain side but we've kind of the projects we used to do on the Waianae side we've we've let lapse so most of our stuff now is on the Kuala Lumpur side. So last year there was a record number of tourists coming to Hawaii almost nine million people and we also see that there's been an influx of social media people promoting hikes and videos sometimes on dangerous and illegal and closed trails. So what do you think about that? How has that impacted our trails on Oahu? Okay so for me this is a really important issue and I get very passionate about it. I get on my soapbox and I have a feeling that a lot of people agree with me because because I do so much trail maintenance I'm very much aware of the impact on the millions of people who come to Hawaii have on our natural research space especially our trails and I've done a lot of work on Manoa Forestry. I've done a lot of work on Kulio Oahu, Hawaii lower range and what I see is that all these people are having a tremendous impact in terms of breaking down all of the doing breaking down all the work that the volunteers have put in over the years and what I notice is that I firstly can't keep up so I I've gone back to Kulio Oahu even after 2010, 11 and 12 when I put in most of my time there. I go back to check the the trail every now and then and I noticed that all the work I've done in the three, four, five years since I put in all that work it's like I didn't do anything. Yeah it needs constant maintenance. And I'm I'm getting old so I just I'm not doing it anymore it's because it's it's it's too much work and every time I go back I see look it's all that work I did last month just you know so there's got to be some way we can help DLNR the Department of Land and Natural Resources get the resources either either money and or bodies to help maintain the state trust because for example Kulio Oahu is a state trail it's part of the Na'ala Hele trail system and one of the real interesting things is that after many complaints from people who live near the trailhead they're finally going to put in a sign at the trailhead. Maybe 20 years too late but better late than ever so I've made some suggestions. Yeah so that's some of the things I know the Oahu group has been doing in addition to just doing some of the restoration and trail work that we do. I know that we did some lobbying at the Capitol to try and get more funding for DLNR to do trail maintenance on Na'ala Hele and I'm sure you're going to continue doing that because you feel so strongly about that. Yes yes I do and I I'm a big fan of giving DLNR the resources to do their job so one of the bills that was introduced last session was SB 703 which would have taken some of the money given to the Hawaii Tourism Authority HTA and taken some of that money given it to the Department of Land and Natural Resources so that they can help or keep or preserve, maintain a lot of the resources that tourists and locals come to depend on. So for example state parks, beaches, trails and one of the reasons Senator Thielen who was one of the co-sponsors of the bill, one of the reasons she thinks that it didn't pass was because it was too generic. It said basically take the money from HTA, give it to DLNR. I didn't say like for what specifically was it to put restrooms in state parks, was it to maintain state trails, was it to clean up the beaches. So she thinks that we should have another go at it this session where we change the language in the bill so that it's much more specific. The money will be given to DLNR to do the following and be very specific so she thinks that will give the bill a better chance of passing. Right so an ongoing issue for the club and something that we have done is created a hiking Hawaii tips to do education so maybe we can pull up that flyer and show our top 10 tips and these are just tips to cover things about safety, being courteous of people, the neighbors in the residents. I think you know for me if I had to choose just one I would say don't hike alone and that's because if something happens to you there is no one there to to help you. So if you are if you're gonna insist on hiking alone I would very much recommend you carry a phone with you so that if worse comes to worse you can call 911. Great and if people want to become more involved with Sierra Club and our hiking or join us for a service project how can they find is there a calendar available? How do we see what upcoming hikes the Oahu group is having? So we have several places where you can look. We have our website SierraClubHawaii.org. We have our Facebook page. We also have our quarterly newsletter the Malamaika Honua. They can call the office or they can call. In fact the probably the best thing is to call the leader of the outing you're interested in going to. So at the end of the description of each outing is the leader's name and contact either email address or phone number. The best way to learn about that particular outing is to call the leader and they can give you all the information you want. Right so there's four groups in the Sierra Club of Hawaii the Oahu group has their own page Sierra Club Oahu so if you're looking on just Oahu hikes that's where you can look and there's a list and the calendar and like you said almost weekly well I think definitely every week we have either a hike a service project here on island or a neighbor island service trip so we have various ways to participate and we also have easy hike so if you don't want to go on a long hike and get hot and sweaty and muddy this short easy hikes that don't take much more than a couple hours great well I think we're going to take a quick break and then we'll come back. Aloha I'm Tim Apocha host for Moving Hawaii Forward a show dedicated to transportation issues and traffic we identify those areas where we do have problems in the state but also the shows dedicated to trying to find solutions not just detail our problems so join me every other Tuesday on Moving Hawaii Forward I'm Tim Apochella thank you you can be the greatest you can be the best you can be the king come play and now your chest you can be the world you can be the war you can talk to God don't bring it on here. This is Jody Malinowski is my mainland talking about hiking and trail issues on Oahu. Joining me is Randy Chang our outings leader of nearly 25 years so Randy you've been doing this for 25 years I know a bunch of the other outings leaders have been doing this for a long time as well so is the outings program looking for new volunteer leaders how do people become more involved in joining the program and what are some of the requirements to do so okay so there are very few requirements really to become an outings leader yeah so the the main ones are you got to be 18 years old Sierra Club member and be certified in first aid and CPI as sort of the base the basic the minimum and and really it's not much more than coming out to on our outings seeing that you like being on a Sierra Club outing and say hey I want to do this I want to leave these outings and so the process can be long or short depending on how how much time you can contribute but basically it's just see how the outings work and then find a mentor the mentor will tell you this is what the process involves and then you just go ahead and do it and eventually you do a checkout height you get certified and then you're an audience leader so it's really very it's a basic it's very simple process but it can take time especially if you're full-time working and you can only maybe come out once or twice a month then the process will take a while right and I think when you do become certified you only have to lead a couple of hikes every year so to stay certified it's like two hikes a year or doesn't have height two outings a year and most of time it'll be hikes I when I first started in 1993 as an audience leader I usually had about three outings a month so I was every and I let all the hard hikes I had all the tough fight because nobody else wanted to do it and he says well you know why don't you lead them and this is sure so I basically we went all over the island and I let all the tough ones all the dangerous ones the ones where people are scared to go and you know they hear people die and all of this stuff so but I nobody ever died on me while I was a leader although I had one there was one hike where you know this guy had a parent heart attack and I thought oh my god this is really bad because I didn't have a cell phone so I sat down with him for about an hour we talked story and then he said you know I feel better I think I think I can make it so I company him down this was a it's it's the one below Kala second tallest peak on a while anyway so we climbed down it's like that these dangerous dykes you know and stuff it's really dangerous and we got there and the group was still waiting for us they waited like over an hour for us and they thought oh my god that's something happened to the two of us but they waited and they ended up happily that's the closest I've come to losing someone on the trail but I haven't yet so cost my fingers you know I don't think we have to worry about safety is kind of a prominent factor of the series the one thing we tell leaders is that's number one whenever you're leading and outing the first thing up the most human has to be participant safety and I know this past year there's been a record number of rescues on trails already and I think it's just people underestimating their abilities or seeing a really cool picture and then wanting to like pursue a hike and they aren't necessarily prepared not bringing enough water things like that so that's why hiking with the club is good because you guys are all CPR for states that that is true so one of the things that social media has done is it has basically inspired people to hike here which is good but they are not really aware of the conditions they'll be facing so our outings leaders are the best I mean it's good to go to Seattle because we're very familiar with the terrain and we know what the dangers are what to look out for the people who go on in and say look at this hike on YouTube with the GoPro camera and you know all of that and they said oh my god this looks so great and they go up there and they freeze or they get really tired or their legs crap or something and then the Sun goes down and they're stuck on the mountain and they've never spent one night of their life hanging out on the trail yeah which is like so cool I've done it many times and it's like it's the coolest thing but they they're like really scared cuz oh my god I'm gonna get eaten alive by giant mosquitoes or something so they call 911 and 911 comes and rescues in but they had no idea what they were getting into not to say they're stupid or anything like that but they're unaware right of hiking conditions on a while so one of the things that Sierra Club is really good at is we we know the hiking conditions so we tell people be you know watch out for that we know where all the dangerous spots on the trail are yeah that's what you should hide but us or Hawaiian trail and mountain club I'll give a shout out to that there's a lot of them are my friends you know yeah so let's talk about what a most recent trail issue one that you've been focusing on and that's haiku stairs so like like you said a lot of people on social media the trail is closed it's illegal to do but people do from the very early to you know stop them before the guard does right so they get there at 3 30 in the morning or four o'clock before the guard gets there and they climb over the fence or they go through a hole in the fence so I could says is a really good example of I would say the overall utilization of our resource because if handled correctly the hike who says could be a tremendous opportunity for a wahoo to to have a sort of this equal tourism kind of deal where people go up and get this great says but they also learn a lot because they could learn about the history of it how it came to be why the stairs were put there and so they did this combined education as well as an outdoorsy experience so we think it's a it's a great resource but it's become this apparently this problem for the border water supply because they don't have an enforcement arm so they basically want to tear the stairs up because they don't have the personnel or the resources to make sure that they can keep the hikers out so I hate to see this but I am you know I went to that hole in the fence one time I didn't do it after the first time but I did one time and it's fantastic it's in court I mean it's just so unique on a lot nothing there is no other hike nor the trail like that on a lot so so if we could if we could somehow stress to people this is how you safely hike this is this is what you'll be looking at this is what you'll be seeing it offers a tremendous opportunity for tourists but it would not vary it right so I know you submitted public comments on the draft environmental assessment was it for the haiku stairs yes yes right so still waiting to hear back what the responses to the comments but I know that you advocated that we open the stairs up and allow people to go and work out some system where you know it's safe and we can do it but to not rip the stairs down so we've lost a lot of trails we've lost a lot of trails in the last 20 years and we're in a nice atmosphere one of another audience leader he and I we sat down we listed all the trails we could think of that close to public access we came up with lists of 25 trails in the last 20 years so we've been losing lots of public access to trails and one of the reasons we're losing everything is there's so many people coming to Hawaii now and hiking because of the internet and all of this YouTube whatever that they go up there and hordes they they get the residents who live near the childhood very upset at them and the residents complain to the mayor the city council or the state legislature or to the sand case or whoever the person they can think of to call and say oh these hikers they're so inconsiderate the white thing their feet on my on my lawn they're using my water holes you know and and there's they talk loud at three or four in the morning or seven in the morning and so a lot of the hikers are in fact inconsiderate or they're oblivious which is worse probably but they get the Russians very upset and so our job is to help the hikers understand the more kinds of behavior they exhibit like this the more that chances they'll lose that access to the trail because the the government officials will be listening to the residents oh you know we we we can't control this kind of behavior we have to close the trail right which is ironic because people come to hike on the trail yes and the influx of people is also partially the reason why the trails are getting right so so for example the mahalahele Oahu person which is Kyle Parsons he's he's come up with a sign to put at the trailhead for Kulio and he wants to kind of incorporate all this into the sign basically saying be considerate you might lose the trail if you don't you know and and and really the the residents concerns range from lack of street parking to the noise to the fact that the hikers leave their litter their pala behind and so a lot of the things that are on that sign is to say be considered of the people who live here and you know just just put yourself in their place and and and be curious be a responsible hiker and so we we gave some suggestions to Kyle to put on the signs and we'll see what it what comes out of it yeah great so we'll keep we'll keep working on this yes yes absolutely fighting for money more money resources to maintain these trails and you guys are doing a great job doing education so I hope so so everything is connected and we know that the Sierra Club is also focusing on some social justice economic justice issues so looking forward to the next session and some of the work that we do at the City Council as well in those things and the Sierra Club Oahu group is a non-profit organization so like think tech Hawaii we rely on volunteer support like yours as well as monthly contributions so if people are interested in finding out more about the Sierra Club and to support our work they can visit our website at Sierra Club Oahu org and to learn more about think tech it's think tech Hawaii calm and on behalf of the Sierra Club Oahu group and thank you so much to Randy Ching for coming on this episode thank you to Cali Lucas and think tech for allowing us to hijack Hawaii is my mainland show and to push some of our issues and that's it happy Loha Friday thank you