Hawaiian bogs occur primarily in montane zones as isolated small patches on flat or gently sloping topography in high rainfall areas in cloud forests and other wet forests on all of the high islands between 3,500-5,500 feet elevation.
These bogs also occur in the subalpine zone at 7,446 feet elevation on Maui, and as a low-elevation bog at 2,120 fee) on Kauai. Soils remain saturated on a shallow to deep layer of peat, underlain by an impervious basal clay layer that impedes drainage.
Two bogs are believed to have formed in former small lakes, one along the Wailuku River, Hawai‘i (Treeless bog), the other the subalpine bog on East Maui (Flat Top bog). The low-elevation bog on Kauai occurs on shallow, poorly drained acidic peat. (NatureServe Explorer)
The Treeless Bog was a large, open bog that lacked woody vegetation. Annual precipitation in this part of the island ranges from approximately 100-200 inches per year, but we had no rainfall data for the individual sites. (Wakeley, 1994)
All of the following is a description crossing the bog by Wm E. Oleson (with D Howard Hitchcock), October 20, 1884, as noted in the Guest Book from Pua Akala, typed by June Humme …
I left Hilo for the purpose of exploring the bed of the Wailuku, and for a tramp for health reasons.
Rode on ‘Grit’ from Hilo to Fuka Maui falls, sending the horse back to Hilo, and starting from that point on foot with four strong school boys, Kapewa from Waipio, Aina from Kohala, Haalilio from Waimanu, and Sidney Smith from Kaawaloa.
We packed our food and clothing on our backs. At noon we struck a trail into the woods above the point where the ‘56 lava stream came into the river, and after walking an hour or more, came to what I suppose was the Honolii stream.
We worked up-stream with great difficulty, water very deep, banks very high, and the land on both sides quite swampy.
At last we left the stream and followed my pocket compass in a southerly direction right through the swamp. Night came on with us when in the boggiest place and we camped under the lee of a fallen tree.
It had rained all the afternoon and we hadn’t a dry thing in the company. After vainly trying to light a fire, using up all but three matches, we crouched down in the rain and cold with a vivid realization that we were out on a tramp.
Next morning early we kept on through the swamp and in half an hour came to the Wailuku. If I were an Englishman I would say that the swamp is the ‘nastiest’ place on Hawaii.
It is like a jungle, and one feels that it takes about a minute a step to get through the tangle of ie ie and to pull one’s feet out of the bog.
If one wants to find out what a victory of mind over matter is, he can find no better proof at the adage is true and in what sense it is true, than by an hour’s pull through this miserable swamp.
We stripped and partially dried our clothes on the rocks of the Wailuku, and at about eight oclock started up river with new courage and an emphatic purpose not to leave the stream to follow the most inviting trail.
At night we made a fern hut and then took our three matches and stood around to see what the result would be of their lighting. No, 1 lighted but burned out before igniting the dry fern leaves. No. 2 wouldn’t light at all. No. 3 made a sickly sputter, and then went out.
We turned in, with wet clothes again, but with the mountain wind blowing right at us, so that this second night was not exactly like unto the first! To cap the climax it poured torrents all night long, and we huddled up like frogs, each in his own pool, and waited for the day.
In the morning we wrung about a bucket of water out of each blanket, and something less from each garment, and shivering and rheumatic we started again for the source of the river. We did some famous climbing, hanging by finger-nails over undesirable places, and ’chinning’ it in one especially difficult place.
Garments failed to stand the strain of so much soaking, and stretching, and gradually separated, so that on finally reaching the edge of the woods, and the source of the river, we felt quite unpresentable.
Three of us went to work on a hut for the night’s camping, getting wood for our fire and grass for our bedding, while the other two went on to Puakala for matches and a supply of edibles, ours having suffered from being too much diluted.
It was not long before Mr. Edw. Hitchcock with extra mules came over and took our entire party to Puakala, for the first time in three days showing us a bright fire and giving us the luxury of dry clothes.
There are occasions when a man doesn’t care whether his clothes and slippers were made for another man, and this was such an occasion.
I am profoundly thankful that inasmuch as there is a Wailuku river and an adjoining swamp, there is also such a hospitable home as Puakala, and such good Samaritans as the Hitchcocks. The original Samaritan just happened across the needy man in the parable, but this Hitchcock Samaritan came out with horses to search for the needy ones.
One thing I want to caution all hapless travelers through the swamp against, and that is, don’t let the host roast you out with his rousing fires, when once you reach Puakala.
The contrast is too overcoming, and after such an experience one needs to get used to fires, as the starving man does to food before he can get back to his normal condition of enduring ordinary supplies of each.
My impressions are that there is such a thing as the Wailuku River, and that it has one source about a mile to the southwest of Puakala, that it has some three or four other sources to the south extending as far as Hale Aloha …
… but that I shall probably never trace any of the other sources unless I get a government appointment and can afford to do the job by proxy. (Wm E. Oleson with D Howard Hitchcock, October 20, 1884, as noted in the Guest Book from Pua Akala, typed by June Humme)
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