Tom Pōhaku Stone says he was born to the ocean.
A renowned big wave surfer and waterman, Stone is a superb athlete and a self-avowed thrill-seeker with the scars to prove it and countless stories of danger and near-death experiences.
He is also a cultural practitioner, a master carver, an educator, and a Ph.D. candidate credited with almost single-handedly reviving heʻe hōlua (land sledding) and is considered to be Hawaiʻi’s foremost expert in the sport.
The practice of heʻe hōlua
Heʻe Hōlua as practiced by our ancestors was an extreme sport unique to Hawaiʻi.
Slides varied tremendously in terms of length, incline, and difficulty. Some were grass slides used for training or recreation. Others were slides built with stones and then covered with hard-packed cinder for more serious competition by aliʻi. The slides were often strewn with pili grass or sugar cane tassels to decrease friction.
Many of the longer slides started up ma uka and ended at the coastline – some at ocean cliffs. The longest and best-preserved rock slide is Kāneaka at Keauhou on Hawaiʻi Island, which, when first constructed, extended about a mile from the hillside to Heʻeia Bay.
Papa hōlua (sleds) range from 12- to 18-feet-long, but are only about six inches wide. They consist of two runners (kāmaʻaloa) made with native hardwoods like kauila lashed to crosspieces (keʻa) made from ʻohe (bamboo). Smaller rails (papa) lashed to the crosspieces served as a platform and hand rails. The kāmaʻaloa were often lubricated with kukui nut oil to make them slide even faster.
Marvels of engineering and design, the aerodynamically constructed sleds can be ridden prone on one’s belly, kneeling, or standing upright, and can travel at speeds in excess of 75 mph.
The practice of hōlua served many purposes. For most people, most of the time, it was purely a fun and thrilling amusement. It was a favorite Makahiki pastime, and spectators would bet on their favorite riders.
Hōlua was also used ritualistically by aliʻi, as portrayed in Apple TV’s "Chief of War." “The aliʻi nui had to perform, to show they’re willing to die if they wanted to lead,” Stone said. “Even though it’s Hollywood style, 'Chief of War' is a great visual of who we were as a people and how we dealt with things.”
Once believed to be a sport reserved for male aliʻi, traditional accounts of the sport describe both male and female riders – commoners and aliʻi alike – prior to western influence. In fact, the best known moʻolelo about hōlua features Pele who rode her papa hōlua on a wave of lava to defeat Kahawali, a prideful young chief from Puna, in a race that nearly killed him.
A life of preparation
Growing up, Stone spent a lot of time in Waikīkī where his tūtū made and sold lei. After helping her, he would go down to the beach and hang out around the beach boys. It was Duke Kahanamoku who helped Stone catch his first wave when he was just 5 years old.
Stone was hooked. Whenever he was in Waikīkī, after helping to sell lei, he was at the beach raking the sand until one of the beach boys put a board into the water for him to surf. A young beach boy, Joey Gerard, was one of his greatest influences, “that’s how I started surfing bigger waves – it’s because of Joey Gerard,” Stone recalled.
Having been pegged by his kūpuna as “athletic,” at the age of 4 Stone was sent to live with his great uncle John Solomon, a Kohala rancher. Solomon had no children so the plan was to hānai Stone and have him take over the ranch. “I was being raised to be a cowboy but Uncle John found me very difficult because I was always drawn to the ocean,” he laughed. Stone lived primarily with Solomon for two years.
Whenever he was on Oʻahu, Stone also spent a lot of time with his maternal grandfather, David Kahanu, in Kāneʻohe. “And that’s how we get to hōlua,” Stone explained. “He was training me to learn about it.”
Kahanu told stories about hōlua riding and took young Stone ti-leaf sliding on grassy Kāneʻohe hillsides and mud sliding in Nuʻuanu Valley. He also took him to a grove of mango trees above Pālolo Valley and challenged Stone to jump from tree to tree all the way down into the valley. “He was teaching me to commit; to focus on what I was doing and not to hesitate,” Stone reflected.
Kahanu was one of Stone’s most significant relationships as a child. “I loved being with him whenever I had a chance because that was where he would tell me the stories over a cup of tea and crackers. And then he left, you know, he passed away. So that was that.”
A cultural and political awakening
Like many young Hawaiians coming of age in the late 1960s, Stone was increasingly dissatisfied and angry about things he couldn’t quite articulate. Outside of surfing and his interest in ocean sports, he was unfocused and got in trouble with the law.
He dropped out of high school and later joined the military. After being discharged, Stone worked for the City & County of Honolulu as an ocean safety officer and spent his free time surfing and windsurfing.
Then, on Jan. 17, 1993, Stone participated in the ʻOnipaʻa March marking 100 years since the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. At ʻIolani Palace, he heard the late Haunani Kay Trask’s now-famous speech in which she asserted “We are not Americans! We will never be Americans!”
Hearing those words in that moment was transformational for Stone. He completed his GED, enrolled at Windward Community College (WCC), and never looked back.
Reviving the art and practice of heʻe hōlua
A research assignment for a Hawaiian culture class at WCC with Kumu Kalani Meinecke, inspired Stone to learn more about hōlua. “Everyone was focusing on voyaging. But I wanted to focus on what my tūtūkāne had been teaching me and research something nobody knew anything about. That’s how it all began.”
So in 1994, with Meinecke’s support, Stone began learning everything he could about hōlua.
He not only wrote a research paper, but built a papa hōlua (sled) that he named Keahiokekai.
His sled was constructed based on descriptions found in Arts and Crafts of Hawaii by Māori anthropologist Sir Peter H. Buck (Te Rangi Hīroa). The description lacked details on how to lash the runners to the crosspieces, so Stone improvised and used canoe lashing techniques.
Stone is quick to point out that reviving hōlua wasn’t his accomplishment alone. His WCC classmates, the late Kilohana Duarte and Anne Campbell (now his wife), were his partners. “They were with me almost from day one. The three of us were on this journey.”
Already in his 40s, Stone channeled his talent for big wave riding and began teaching himself to heʻe hōlua. He took his papa hōlua to Maui to ride an ancient slide at ʻUlupalakua, but the tips of his runners broke off in transit. He was still able to ride it, but later took his papa hōlua to Hawaiʻi Island intending to burn it since it was damaged.
Stone went down to Kīholo Bay and left his papa hōlua on the shore while he gathered wood for a fire. When he returned, there were six large honu (turtles) resting on it. Stone took this as a hōʻailona (sign). He did not burn his papa hōlua that day. In fact, he still rides it.
By 1997, Stone had already built several papa hōlua and so was allowed access to the only surviving pre-contact papa hōlua which was housed at Bishop Museum. Stone spent years studying its construction.
“The engineering that goes into hōlua construction is ancient. It’s about balance and flexibility. It’s both scientific and symbolic. If you make the papa hōlua rigid it’s going to break at high speed. You have to build that sense of unified flexibility into it. That’s the most important thing.”
Divine inspiration and the role of women in hōlua
Between 1994 and 1998 Stone had a series of vivid dreams. In his dreams he walked the land with a woman he did not know. Eventually, they ended up at Halemaʻumaʻu in Kīlauea and he recognized the woman as Pele. In his dream, Pele explained the proper technique for lashing hōlua.
“I woke up at like 1:00 in the morning, went outside, took it apart, and re-lashed it traditionally,” Stone said.
Hōlua lashing requires a circular double wrap – a pattern that allows the sled’s runners to open slightly and flex forward and backwards. It takes about 375 consecutive feet of sennit.
But Stone learned more than hōlua lashing techniques from his dreams. He also came to understand the important role that women played in hōlua. “My mom always told me when a kupuna visits you, be open and go on the journey. So I did. And I learned more within those moeʻuhane than I learned from my research.”
He learned that the papa hōlua he studied at Bishop Museum was named Lonoikamakahiki and had belonged to Kanemuna, a woman from Hoʻokena. “And then I started to realize, as I searched for hōlua slides, they all have wāhine names.”
According to Stone, the prominence of women in the sport – and it’s connection to female deities like Pele – made hōlua a target of missionaries who not only wanted to suppress traditional religion, but also the prominence of women in Hawaiian society to align with western notions of male dominance and female subservience.
He believes that this is why so little is known about hōlua, and why so few hōlua slides remain.
“In Hawaiian culture, wāhine are more important [than men] because they carry the moʻokūʻauhau,” said Stone. “Hawaiian women had more political, social and spiritual capital than their western counterparts, which clashes with the conventional western Judeo-Christian world view.”
Stone said that what the missionaries “saw” was a dangerous sport that women actively participated in, with slides named after female deities. “They needed to eliminate the worship of females,” he said, noting that erasure of hōlua from Hawaiian consciousness included dismantling many of the slides. And in more than one instance, the stones that formed the slides were reused to build churches.
The future of heʻe hōlua
Now in his 70s, Stone is concerned that outsiders will co-opt heʻe hōlua, monetize it, and profit off of Hawaiian intellectual and cultural property the way surfing – Hawaiʻi’s most famous export – was co-opted in the mid-20th century.
“The reason I’m very choosy about who maintains the knowledge is because I’ve had offers from skateboarding and snowboarding companies. But it’s not for sale,” Stone said adamantly.
Stone is not currently mentoring any hōlua makers or riders outside his own family, although he has previously served as kumu to a handful of cultural practitioners who are now perpetuating ʻike pertaining to hōlua and fabrication of papa hōlua: Kumulāʻau Sing, ʻIliahi Doo, Kunāne Wooton, and Mahi La Pierre.
However, Stone is arguably Hawaiʻi’s most active hōlua rider.
In his experience, few people want to commit. “It’s a process of pain to make a papa hōlua,” said Stone. “Your hands will be bleeding and your whole body aches because you learn to lash with your fingers, toes, teeth – whatever.”
Reflecting on his twin passions for heʻe hōlua and heʻe nalu (surfing), Stone said that at their essence they are the same.
“Look at it from a cultural point of view. Pele is on one side and Nāmakaokahaʻi (sea goddess and sister to Pele) is on the other. Although the legend is about them battling their way across the islands, I see it as a harmonizing. They go hand in hand,” Stone said.
“Hōlua and surfing are one and the same. If no more waves, ride the mountains.”
This article is reprinted with permission from OHA's Ka Wai Ola newspaper: "Reviving Hawaʻi's Extreme Sport: He'e Hōlua" by Puanani Fernandez-Akamine, in its February 2026 issue, Vol. 43 No. 2. Read more at kawaiola.news.
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