Eventually, we arrived at segment of the road that looked familiar. What tipped me off was the sight of an HTMC pink ribbon, the first ribbon of any kind we had seen all day. After reversing a few yards, we recognized a road heading downridge toward Camp Erdman that we had hiked a couple months back with other HTMC folks. In fact, this section of the road was part of the club's Nihoa Gulch hike. There is a water collection hut constructed by the state at this point.
Familiar ground is always a comforting place to be.
On the club hike, we headed left and down, eventually emerging on the Kealia Trail. Today, we went right and began to switchback out of the gulch until we reached a junction with the main Mauka Road we had left earlier. If we had earlier stuck to the main Mauka Road, the distance to this junction would have been 2.2 miles. However, our exploratory makai interlude ended up being probably double this distance. We continued on the Mauka Road, passing a section that had been blocked by a huge landslide but has since been re-opened by bulldozer.