By Monty Downs, M.D.
Former President,
Kaua’i LifeguardAssociation
Springtime in Hawaii. The days start to get noticeably longer, and we tend to have fewer of those cold winter nights. (My friends who live in wintry locales laugh when I say “Brrr, it was cold last night, got down to 58 degrees.” But after they’ve finished their chuckle, I ask them “what temperature do you keep your home?” The answer is usually 68 to 70, even if you live in Minnesota. So when I tell them “Hey, we don’t have central heating and our home is 58 degrees”, then they understand why we pull out a quilt and a morning jacket.)
Spring here is nowhere near as defined a season as it tends to be in colder areas. Other than the two aspects I just mentioned, there’s not a lot of difference between our spring and the other seasons. It may be rainy, or maybe not. As far as the ocean is concerned, the winter North swells become less frequent, but they can still hit our northern shores deep into spring and all the way through May, even though we tend to think of December and January as being the peak winter North swell months.
North winter swells. These can be a problem (unless of course you’re a surfer, in which case they’re why you live here). What our visitors often don’t realize about these swells is that QUEENS BATH, ONCE AGAIN Spring 2023 63 people got pinned against the cliff face, huddling from the waves that were pounding the area. Air 1, the fire department helicopter, had to be deployed with its Stokes litter basket to extricate them. Thankfully just bumps and bruises, Waimaumau did not claim its dead this time.
The County of Kauai takes the area seriously. There is a long fence (but there is an endpoint to the fence and determined people figure out how to get around it), there is a locked gate in the winter months, there are signs, there are blocked off areas that used to be parking areas. And still people figure out how to get down to Waimaumau, endangering themselves and their potential rescuers.
What about going to Waimaumau on a nice day, when there is no incoming swell? That’s a tough question. Local kids love the area in the summer months, jumping off into the ocean and climbing back up the rock face and it’s always sad to gate off yet another area on Kauai. Let me put it this way: Before the guide book and social media explosion, NO VISITOR knew about the area. The cat is now out of the bag for sure, visitors are dying to go there after what they see and read. The gate is opened in the summer months, unless an off-season North swell is expected.
Bottom line: I don’t have a great answer to the question I just asked but, I plead with anyone who reads this, don’t YOU go to Waimauamau unless you are 100% CERTAIN that there is no North swell condition in play that day. Enjoy our Hawaiian spring, have fun, and be smart and safe. DANGER NO TRESPASSING WHEN LOCKED DUE TO HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS VIOLATORS MAY BE CITED, PROSECUTED AND CHARGED FOR RESCUE OR RECOVERY EXPENSES 62 www.kauaifamilymagazine.com QUEENS BATH ONCE AGAIN it can be a gorgeous day here in Hawaii, but the surf can be monstrously high on our North shores. The reason for this is that the swells are generated by huge violent storms way up in the Bering Sea, storms that happened a week ago. It takes the generated swell several days to arrive in Hawaii, and when they arrive it could be, as I noted, a gorgeous day here. In many/ most other places, it takes a nasty and stormy day for swells to batter a shoreline — and not many people want to go to the beach on a nasty stormy day. But here, it’s a different story. Tragically, right in Christmas season, we suffered the effects of this when a family of three — father, mother and daughter, were snorkeling at an unguarded North Shore are and they got pulled out to sea by a current. The mother and daughter were rescued but the father wasn’t, and his body was never recovered.
I’m going to focus a bit now on the North Shore area known as called Queens Bath. It’s not clear how the name Queens Bath came about. The area was known to Hawaiians as Waimaumau and it’s a lava “bench” with the seaward edge of the bench 10-15 ft above sea level, on a calm day. On a North swell day, the waves can explode 60 or even 100 feet into the air and if you’re on the ledge oohing and aahing at a sea turtle in the ocean, you’re a goner. The landward side of the ledge can be up to 30-40 yards from the ocean, or as little as 10 feet, depending on where you are on the bench, which is probably 200 yards long. It is a most exotic and beautiful area, heavily promoted in guide books and social media. But it’s absolutely crazy, and deadly, to go there when a North swell is hitting our shores. Just a couple of weeks before I wrote this piece, a group of four people got pinned against the cliff face, huddling from the waves that were pounding the area. Air 1, the fire department helicopter, had to be deployed with its Stokes litter basket to extricate them. Thankfully just bumps and bruises, Waimaumau did not claim its dead this time.
The County of Kauai takes the area seriously. There is a long fence (but there is an endpoint to the fence and determined people figure out how to get around it), there is a locked gate in the winter months, there are signs, there are blocked off areas that used to be parking areas. And still people figure out how to get down to Waimaumau, endangering themselves and their potential rescuers. What about going to Waimaumau on a nice day, when there is no incoming swell? That’s a tough question. Local kids love the area in the summer months, jumping off into the ocean and climbing back up the rock face and it’s always sad to gate off yet another area on Kauai. Let me put it this way: Before the guide book and social media explosion, NO VISITOR knew about the area. The cat is now out of the bag for sure, visitors are dying to go there after what they see and read. The gate is opened in the summer months, unless an off-season North swell is expected.
Bottom line: I don’t have a great answer to the question I just asked but, I plead with anyone who reads this, don’t YOU go to Waimauamau unless you are 100% CERTAIN that there is no North swell condition in play that day. Enjoy our Hawaiian spring, have fun, and be smart and safe.
