We spent almost 9 hours over this less-than-5-mile round trip and ran out of 2.5 gallons of water in my backpack. We also went through two thunder weather patterns during the descent and got soaking wet in the first one. Total elevation gain is around 3100ft! I think even without little kids it would still take me more than 6 hours to finish it in the same condition. We were the only group on that day doing this hike.
The hike started with dense tropical forests and bushes. Even at higher elevation, the bushes are still very bad, like much worse than my last trip to Edith lake in Yosemite
](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
Once going up to the ridge line, the trees are gone but the bushes are still there. We started really early so the heat was not that bad. It's very steep and slippery so some ropes are put on by locals without much maintenance. The roots of the bush helped a lot.
The view is awesome once up on the ridge line.
The exposure actually is more that what I planned for a tropical hike
Above 2500ft, we can see the whole island in all directions.