A self-described “adrenaline junkie” risked his life after jumping on a trampoline on the edge of an illegal hiking trail in Hawaii nicknamed “Dead Man’s Catwalk.”
Cameron Dorsi, who boasts a little under 10,000 followers on Instagram, and his friends recently went viral for showing off their acrobatics along the Kamehame Ridge Trail in East O'ahu – 14 miles east of Honolulu.
Dorsi posted videos showing him doing backflips on a trampoline next to a 600 foot drop. Dead Man’s Catwalk was once home to a concrete slab leaning over the ridge, which drove swarms of tourists to the site – before later being closed by the state.
“I love adventures and I love adrenaline. It's an awesome experience and a feeling that money just can't buy,” Dorsi told Island News.
The trampoline was apparently already set up when the group of thrill-seekers arrived, Dorsi claimed. After using multiple cameras to film their content, he said that his group removed the trampoline from the area.
Despite the removal, Dorsi cast doubt over the hazardous nature of his actions and said that social media created a “false sense of reality where it looks more dangerous than it really is.”
Dorsi continued: “We definitely didn't want to promote any kind of danger to make people go up there and do that. It's not going to be there if you go up there and do that. It's gone. Everything's picked up and cleaned up even better than we found it. We just want to have a good time,” he shared.”
Several of Hawaii’s trails have been closed in recent years over fears around liability if hikers get injured.
More recently, leaders in areas with closed trails have warned tourists and locals alike from hiking there.
The clip swirled on social media just weeks after Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi condemned a group that illegally hiked the partly-dismantled Haiku Stairs – branded the “Stairway to Heaven” – and went so far as to throw a metal railing off the side of a cliff.
“We definitely do not advocate going on closed hikes like Kamehame Ridge for recreational purposes. It's illegal and dangerous,” Wayne Tanaka, chapter director of the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, said.
Dorsi, however, argued that his group meant no disrespect to the city and its guidance and said that some people are more risk-averse than others.
“That's definitely not the way we wanted to go, especially with the recently viral videos of Stairway. I do not want to get categorized as that because we're not vandalizers and we mean nothing but respect,” Dorsi noted.
He concluded: “Everyone has a limit.”
In December, 19-year-old University of Utah student, Tiare Couto, plunged to her death on New Year's Eve from a slippery Pūpūkea-Paumalū State Park Reserve trail in Oahu while she was home for the holidays.
