CRATER CLIMB WORTH THE SWEAT.

Byline: Toni Stroud Fort Worth Star-Telegram 

This is not postcard Hawaii. Not yet. Here, on the floor of Diamond Head crater, just moments into the hiking trail that 45 minutes later will emerge at the summit, it's hot and ugly.

The sharp upward slope of the crater's interior magnifies the morning sun, focusing its rays on the trail. On an island where it's always about to rain, this jutting point on Oahu's southeast coast looks to have missed its share several years running. The scrub brush is wheat-colored - what there is of it.

From the hotels of Waikiki to the trail head, it's maybe a 45-minute walk to Diamond Head's entrance, a steady but gentle uphill effort, good warm-up for the real climb to come. Or you can hail a cab for the $8 ride or catch the bus for $1.

Monetarily speaking, entry to this international landmark is free. But this extinct volcano extracts its admission fees in the currency of sweat and sunburn. It gives change in strained joints.

Those who arrive early - the gates open at 6 a.m. - may have no more company than the sound of their own laces slapping shoe leather.

A triathlon of dirt embankments, rock ledges and cement stairways storms the near-palisade of the volcano's inner slope. At some points along the way, one misplaced step could mean a badly twisted ankle, the ruts in the path are worn so deep. Rusted iron hand railings follow the ascent, although they've been disfigured in places by who knows what form of assault.

Several of the switchbacks have room for rail-roosting, and hikers can get out of the sun in long, unlit tunnels that are part of the course.

Actually, certain adventurers don't deem Diamond Head much of a challenge. Maybe that's because Diamond Head, when viewed from Waikiki Beach, seems so much smaller than expected, almost a toy. Once inside the crater (accessible only via a two-lane tunnel that bores through the mountain's backside), it still looks easy; the first leg of the trail is wide and paved, deceptively level and attached to a parking lot, drinking fountain, pay phone and restrooms.

First-time visitors confidently snub the vendors who've set up ice chests where the trail commences. Here, they're asking $2 for Menehune Water (the Hawaiian Evian); convenient stores around town sell the same size bottle for 75 cents.

But no one, having made it this far, wants to turn back. Not for cheap water. Not for the flashlight to part the darkness of the passageways.

Ahead - better make that above - are 69 steps to a low-clearance tunnel, which leads to 99 stairs to a second tunnel, which weaves past trash-filled rooms cordoned off by jail bars, which moves onto a 43-step spiral staircase, which follows the scent of Pine Sol and pineapple, which emerges in a gunnery bunker.

These are the bones of Fort Ruger, a system of lookouts and artillery emplacements built in 1909, revamped in the '40s. Soldiers got to their posts by way of the trail just ascended - and which continues, half-crawling, half-climbing, out through the gun slit.

Then suddenly, some 700 feet straight below, at the bottom of the volcano's southern face, are a storybook lighthouse, a coral reef that gleams green through the surf, the endlessly blue Pacific.

Just a little farther up, at trail's end, from Diamond Head's pinnacle, Honolulu stretches away to the west, from the greenbelt of Kapiolani Park at Diamond Head's base to the white columns of Waikiki's hotels and the city's high-rise downtown.

To the east, there's a view of Koko Head; to the north, beyond the yawn of Diamond Head's own crater, the jungle-green flanks of the Koolau Mountains, whose peaks disappear into the clouds.

The cool breeze at the top is payback - the experience of the climb of a lifetime. Just to prove it, there are countless stacks of ``I Survived Diamond Head'' T-shirts, eight bucks apiece, waiting at the base of the trail.

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Photo

Photo: Diamond Head looks benign when seen from sunny Waiki ki Beach, but the steep climb to the crater of the extinct volcano - the site of World War II gun emplacements - is for determined climbers only.

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News