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Using This Book

How This Book Organizes the Trips

Imagine the hour hand of a clock pinned to a point near the center of a rounded island. Think of it sweeping around clockwise from a twelve o’clock position that’s due north. It’s easy to envision the hour hand pointing to three o’clock (due east), six o’clock (due south), and nine o’clock (due west) as it moves around.

You can think of Hawaii as a clock with its hour hand pinned to its middle, about halfway up the slope of Mauna Loa from the Saddle Road. A little before the twelve o’clock, the imaginary hour hand points at Waipio Valley. Near three o’clock, it points to Lava Tree State Monument, and at nine o’clock it points to Captain Cook’s Monument. On the right is the Hawaii clock pointing to Waipio Valley.

The trips start near twelve o’clock at Waipio Valley (Trip 1) and move clockwise around the island, ending near eleven o’clock at Pololu Valley (Trip 58). There are two big sets of exceptions to this order; I’ve described them below.

Hikes from the Saddle Road

The first set of exceptions to this organizational scheme are the seven hikes from the Saddle Road (Trips 7 through 13). You can get to the first two, Kaumana Caves and Puu Oo, by daytripping from Hilo. Kaumana Caves and Puu Oo appear first among the Saddle Road hikes and in that order (Trips 7 and 8). Then you jump past a couple of trailheads to the westernmost Saddle Road hike, the one at Mauna Kea State Park (Trip 9). You can do this one as a daytrip from Hilo, too. However, I judge that you should stay at Mauna Kea State Park in order to take the last four Saddle Road hikes (see Appendix A for information on renting a cabin at the park). Staying at Mauna Kea State Park will allow you to get a little bit acclimated and will cut your driving time significantly for the last four Saddle Road hikes (Trips 10 through 13). They are very strenuous, high-altitude trips, one to the top of Mauna Kea and three on the slopes of Mauna Loa.

Hikes in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

No other area on the Big Island offers anything approaching the number and variety of trails you will find in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. All the Big Island backpacking trips that appear in this book are in the park. Kilauea’s latest eruption has severed the park’s road system from the Puna District’s Highway 130. Most of the park’s roads, and therefore most of the hikes in the park, are accessible only from the main entrance off Highway 11, 28 miles southwest of Hilo. Thirty-one of the thirty-four Hawaii Volcanoes National Park trips in this book originate southwest of Hilo. They are Trips 20 through 49.

A left turn from Highway 11 brings you to the toll booths of the entrance station. Just past the entrance station, a right turn brings you to the park’s remaining visitor center, Kilauea Visitor Center. This is an excellent place to stop, take advantage of the restrooms and water fountains, stretch your legs, enjoy the interpretive displays, perhaps buy some books and maps, and get information from the rangers at the front desk. A number of outstanding park trails begin just across the street from Kilauea Visitor Center, near Volcano House (which sits on the rim of Kilauea Crater but is well-hidden from the visitor center by a charming grove of ohia trees and tree ferns). Hikes from Kilauea Visitor Center appear first of those park hikes that originate southwest of Hilo. They are Trips 20 through 27.

The street in front of Kilauea Visitor Center is Crater Rim Road. It allows you to drive completely around Kilauea and Kilauea Iki craters (if it’s not interrupted by road work or volcanic activity). The next set of hikes in this book are those that start somewhere on Crater Rim Road other than Kilauea Visitor Center. They’re in the order you’d find them as you drove away from the visitor center toward Thurston Lava Tube for a clockwise trip around the road. They are Trips 28 through 31.

A few miles down Crater Rim Road, just at the turnoff for the Devastation Trail, you’ll reach the turnoff for the Chain of Craters Road. This road winds down from the Kilauea area of the park, through terrain often drastically altered by the volcano, for more than 20 miles to its end on the Puna coast at the glossy black lavas of 1989. The next set of hikes in this book are those that start on the Chain of Craters Road, roughly in the order they appear as the road descends. They are Trips 32 through 39.

On your way down the Chain of Craters Road, you pass the turnoff for Hilina Pali Road. The next set of hikes in this book are those that start on Hilina Pali Road. They are Trips 40 through 45.

The next set of hikes for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park originates outside the Kilauea area, along the Mauna Loa Road. (Sometimes it’s called the Mauna Loa Strip Road.) You get to this road by staying on Highway 11 for just over two miles past the turnoff to the visitor center. The most important foot trail up Mauna Loa begins—no surprise—at the end of the Mauna Loa Road. Trips 46 through 48 start from the Mauna Loa Road.

There’s one more park hike still farther southwest on Highway 11. That’s the last Hawaii Volcanoes National Park hike in this book, Trip 49, the Footprints Trail.

How to Read the Trip Descriptions

The trip descriptions are in the following format, and here is what the information in each description means:

Distance: 3½miles

Elevation gain: 713’

Hiking time: 2 hours

Topos: Koko Head, Honolulu

Difficulty: Moderate to strenuous, hiking boots recommended

Highlights: A varied rainforest trail in Maunawili Valley leads to a lovely waterfall with a fine pool.

Title

Pretty self-explanatory

Trail type

There are four types of trips described:

	Loop trips: You follow trails that form a closed loop. You don′t retrace your steps, or retrace them only for a relatively short distance.
	Semiloop trips: The trip consists of a loop part and an out-and-back part.
	Out-and-back trips: This is by far the most common type of trip in this book. You follow the trail to a destination and then retrace your steps to your starting point.
	Shuttle trips: You start at one trailhead and finish at another, "destination" trailhead. The trailheads are far enough apart, or walking between them is sufficiently impractical, that you need to have a car or a ride waiting for you at the destination trailhead.

Terrain type

General type of area this hike is in. For those hikes that include both coastal and inland segments, this is a judgment call.

	Hike is inland, possibly in the hills or mountains.
	Hike is along the coast, possibly on a beach or on cliffs above the ocean.

Distance

The distance is the total distance you have to walk.

Elevation gain

This figure is the approximate cumulative elevation gain; it counts all the significant “ups” you have to walk, not just the simple elevation difference between the trailhead and the destination. It’s the cumulative gain that your muscles will complain about. Some trips are upside-down: you go downhill on your way out to the destination, uphill on your return.

Hiking time

This is based on my normal hiking speed, which is a blazing 2 miles/hour.

Topos

The topo or topos listed here are the ones that cover the area you’ll be hiking in on this particular trip. Topos are strictly optional for the very easy and easy trips but are strongly recommended for the other trips.

Trail map

Only listed if the map cannot be found near the “Description.” As explained in Appendix C, the trail maps are based on the topos wherever possible. However, a number of trails on Hawaii do not appear on any official agency map or on the topos. I have approximated their routes based on field notes and sketches and labeled them “(route approximated).” Some maps are too big for one page and are continued on another page, sometimes at the end of another trip, as noted on the edges of those maps. I’ve allowed a little overlap between those maps to help you follow them from one page to another.

The following figure shows the trail map legend:

Difficulty and suggested shoes

A trip’s difficulty is based first on total distance and second on cumulative elevation gain and rate of gain. Let′s say that the elevation gain is negligible to moderate (it’s never steeper than about 500 feet/mile for any significant distance). In that case:

A very easy trip is 1 mile or less with negligible elevation gain/loss.

An easy trip is 1–2 miles with little elevation gain/loss.

A moderate trip is 2–5 miles and has some noticeable elevation gain/loss.

A strenuous trip is more than 5 miles and has significant elevation gain/loss.

If the trip has a section of, say, a half mile or more where it′s steeper than 500 feet per mile, or if the trail is especially rough or hard to follow, I’ve given it the next higher difficulty rating.

Some trips just aren’t safe if you’re not wearing boots that have soles that grip and which will give you some ankle support. However, only you live in your body, so you will have to be the final judge of what you can safely wear. The standard wording follows:

Tennis shoes recommended

Hiking boots strongly recommended

Hiking boots mandatory—the route is very rough.

Highlights

This gives you an idea of what I think the best features of the trip are. Usually, it’s the scenery—that’s one of the principal things you came to Hawaii for!

Driving instructions

This gives you instructions for driving to the trailhead, usually in terms of driving from Hilo, the county seat. You may be staying anywhere on the Big Island, but Hilo is a convenient reference point. The starting point in Hilo is the junction of Highways 11 and 19; it’s mile zero for those highways, which form the island-circling Hawaii Belt Road.

Some trips simply aren’t feasible unless you’re staying nearer to them than Hilo. Trips like that include:

 Longer trips from the Saddle Road (Trips 10 through 13). Stayin Mauna Kea State Park.

 Those on the west side of the Big Island (Trips 51 through 58). Stay somewhere on the Kona Coast or in the Kohala area.

Those trips are treated as side trips from a place where I think it’s practical for you to stay.

To savor an extended visit to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, stay in Volcano village or in the park itself if possible. But Hilo is close enough to the park if those places are booked or are priced out of your range.

Be sure you have a good road map of Hawaii to supplement these instructions.

Permit/permission required

Some trips require you to have someone’s permission to camp. This section will tell you what you need permission for, if anything, and whom to apply to. See Getting Permits or Permission and Appendix A in this book for addresses and telephone numbers.

Description

This is the detailed description of the trip as I perceived it. I’ve tried to give you an idea of the more obvious plants and other features you’ll find, where the rough spots are, when you’ll be ascending and when descending, where viewpoints are, and what you’ll see from those viewpoints.

On some trips, the trail is faint to nonexistent, and the agency in charge has attempted to mark the route by tying tags of colored plastic ribbon to plants along the route. You navigate by moving from tag to tag. I found route-tagging on the island of Hawaii to be largely unreliable, I’m sorry to say. Don’t count on tags to get you in and out of an area. Always keep track of where you’ve been by map and compass or by landmarks, as the tags can be misleading or can just peter out.

In Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, routes across lava fields are marked by cairns—piles of rocks, obviously manmade and sometimes quite elaborate, even playful. You’ll also find cairns marking a few of the trails outside of the park. I found the cairns to be reliable guides. However, it can be hard to tell a cairn from the rest of the rocks in a field of aa, the rough, chunky kind of lava. Be sure you have the next cairn in sight before you move from the present cairn. Once you’ve moved on, check behind yourself occasionally to keep track of the cairns you’ve left. If you discover that you’ve gotten off track—you’ve missed the real cairns and have been following odd heaps of aa—you’ll be prepared to retrace your steps to the last real cairn. It happened to me more than once! Cairns can be hard to follow in rain, fog, or snow; avoid cairn-marked routes when the weather is poor or the route is under snow.

Supplemental information

At the bottom of most of the trips, there’s some extra information about the historical significance of places you’ll see along the route. Or maybe there’s a story—a myth, for example—related to the trip that I hope will add to your enjoyment of the trip. Perhaps there’ll be a bit more information about the plants in or the geology of the area. I put most of the supplemental information at the end so that it doesn’t interfere too much with the description of the trip itself. I think safety dictates that you give your attention first to the trip and only secondarily to the supplemental information. That is not a problem with easy and very easy hikes, so the supplemental information is often part of the main description in those hikes.

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