May 20, 2017
Our first trip to The Garden Island was full of exploring, happy hours, eating, drinking, and relaxing. We planned to do a couple hikes, but ended up hiking only to Sleeping Giant due some trailhead closures on the island.
We arrived at the East Trail trailhead around 7 AM. From the lot we were able to get a good view of our goal for the morning:
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| Sleeping Giant |
I'd consider the hike easy to moderate. The weather had been sunny for a few days already, so we didn't encounter any slippery rocks or clay. We were warned many times that hiking this trail after or during a rain could be dangerous due to the clay soils. Actually, I think that's the case for most of the trails on the island.
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| Rewarding views for relatively little work |
An open grassy area with a picnic shelter, tables, and benches was a nice area to catch my breath before making the final scramble up to the nose.
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| Picnic shelter |
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| At the top! |
Views from the top were amazing. My legs were literally shaking, though, because I'm not very confident with heights without guardrails. Took most of my photos from a kneeling position!
On the last day of our trip we drove up to see Waimea Canyon. I wish we had more time as there were many hikes in the area.
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| Waimea Canyon aka Grand Canyon of the Pacific |
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| Canyonero! |
