I love to get close to waterfalls! I mean, REALLY close. Close enough to swim in their plunge pools or take a shower in them. Especially when I don't have to deal with a lot of other people who want to do exactly the same thing.

Here in Hawaii there are hundreds of beautiful waterfalls. But almost all of them have one of two serious drawbacks from my point of view. Most are very hard to get close to, such as most of Kauai's waterfalls, which you have to hike many miles to reach. But most of the ones that are more accessible are so well-known that there usually crowds of noisy tourists snapping pictures of them. Honolulu's Manoa Falls is a good example of a this kind of waterfall. So I'm always trying to find those few, "secret" waterfalls that are reasonably easy to get to, but still unknown.

You need to come to the crowded island of Oahu to find most of these. The hiking trails here are mostly short and easy to get to, yet despite our population of about a million people, almost all of them are very uncrowded. I'm not sure why this is but I think it has to do with Oahu being marketed to tourists as the shopping and nightlife island, while they are steered to other islands for "adventure" activities. It was here on Oahu that I discovered one of my all-time favorite secret waterfalls: Lulumahu Falls.

It takes about one hour to hike to this gorgeous waterfall, on a mostly easy trail. As always with hiking, tell someone where you are going, and hike with at least one companion. You start your hike walking on a wide dirt road and then make a sharp left at an irrigation ditch. The rest of this first half of the trail is often overgrown, and hard to follow in some places, because of intersections with other trails where you need to know which way to turn. But if you keep heading in the same general direction you will eventually reach the stream. If you've made all the right turns, you arrive at the stream at a spot where you cross over the top of a small dam. From here on the route along the stream is pretty obvious, and easy except in places where trees have fallen down on the trail. Those spots, along with a few places where you have to cross the stream, introduce enough difficulty that I would describe this as an intermediate rather than easy trail. I recommend wearing "tabis" for this hike, which are shoes designed for walking on reefs. The stream is lovely, and there are numerous ti plants along the route as you go into a very narrow valley that gets even narrower as you approach your destination. The flash flood danger is pretty severe here; turn around immediately if it starts raining hard! You should also hike in the middle of the day, or it can be quite dark in the area of the waterfall.

Once you reach the waterfall, it is a sight to behold! There are several other cascades going up hundreds of feet behind the main waterfall, which is surrounded by dramatic encircling cliff walls. The pool is wide but unfortunately only about waist-deep, so not really suitable for swimming. On the other hand it is very easy to walk around the right side of the pool and walk right up to the waterfall and take a shower. And you and your companions will almost certainly have this beautiful, dramatic spot all to yourselves.

So where is this trail? Ah, it's a secret! But if you email me I can tell you...