Born in Hilo, Hawaii, and raised at Waioli, Kauai, the son of American Protestant missionaries Abner and Lucy Wilcox, George Norton Wilcox (1839-1933) became a pioneer Kauai sugar planter and a generous philanthropist, who also served as a legislator of
Born in Hilo, Hawaii, and raised at Waioli, Kauai, the son of American Protestant missionaries Abner and Lucy Wilcox, George Norton Wilcox (1839-1933) became a pioneer Kauai sugar planter and a generous philanthropist, who also served as a legislator of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the Republic of Hawaii.
Yet, away from Grove Farm Plantation — which he purchased from Judge Herman Widemann in 1870 and built into a profitable enterprise — George Wilcox took delight in hiking in the mountains of Kauai on the old trails Hawaiians had used since time immemorial.
In 1870, he climbed to the summit of Kauai’s greatest mountain, Mt. Waialeale, by following an ancient trail that Hawaiians had climbed annually in earlier times to make offerings to their god, Kane. The Hawaiian trail ascended Waialeale’s forbidding eastern face, and when George climbed it, the trail was rarely used and was obstructed by vegetation – yet passible – which is not the case today.
With George were four Hawaiian men, one Hawaiian woman (their names are not known) who acted as guides, and Heinrich Wawra, an Austrian botanist.
If you look carefully at Waialeale’s northeastern face on a clear day, you can see their route. It followed the sharp spine of a long ridge that rises steadily upward from northeast to southwest, and then turns more steeply westward toward the summit.
The route is terribly steep and narrow with fearsome drop-offs on either side. Plants uproot when they’re grasped and pitons will not hold in the crumbly soil.
George repeated the climb in 1874 with George Dole and Fred Smith. About 100 years later, Valdemar Knudsen, with Kauai helicopter pilot Jack Harter aloft in radio contact, made a dauntless attempt, but was turned back at about 3,000 feet by impassable terrain.
No one has scaled the eastern face of Waialeale to the summit since the Wilcox, Dole and Smith ascent.
