Aiea Loop and a Plane Wreck

I've now run 'Aiea Loop Trail three times. It's somewhere between four and five miles long if you don't get lost (more on that later). The loop is in the foothills above Pearl Harbor. The trail goes up for about two miles with little peekaboo views of the ocean and Pearl Harbor from time to time. There are lots of nasty little roots to trip over. It makes for a great little adventure run, which may be slow, but is so more up my alley than road running. Bleh.

So the first time I ran the trail, Mike joined me. We completed the loop in about an hour. The second time, Joe joined me. We decided to check out a different overlook (worth it!) and ended up taking a back trail down to Camp Smith. There we did a few pullups at a cool park and used Google Maps to sort of get us back on course. Really this dumped us out at Smith Airfield which is a very cool open field with a really nice road, signs from ages past, and no people. From there we cut through the woods back to the trail and completed our loop. This ended up being closer to six and a half miles according to the running watch. 

I found out there was an old airplane wreck there. So Mike, Joe and I went back to explore it. As expected, the wreck is visible right off the side of the trail. We had gone right past it twice and not seen it. There was a big branch hanging into the trail with an arrow and the word airplane written on it. We walked down the side of ravine following a path of destruction. Here was part of a wing; there was the fuel bladder. Further down the landing gear was jammed under a fallen tree. Near the bottom we found the motor. Most of the pieces of the old plane had been scavenged, but it was fun to find what we did.

The hike back out was a weird scramble up the side of the ravine since we figured we had gone too far to turn around. We were all scratched, bug bitten, and covered in little bits of leaves, dirt, mud, whatever. It was a really fun adventure. Since Mike had missed the last run, Joe wanted to take him to Camp Smith and the airfield, so we completed the longer loop again.