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Using This Book

How This Book Organizes the Trips

Kauai is closer to being round than any of the other major Hawaiian islands. And Mt. Waialeale sits almost in the middle of it. Imagine the hour hand of a clock pinned to Mt. Waialeale, and I’ll use the clock analogy for describing where the trip is on Kauai’s circumference. At 12 o’clock, for example, the imaginary Kauai clock hand points to Hanalei. At 6 o’clock, the hand points a little past Poipu.

The trips start, of course, at 12 o’clock at Hanalei and move clockwise around Kauai past Kapaa, Lihue, Poipu, Waimea, Kekaha, Waimea Canyon State Park, Polihale, Kokee State Park, the Na Pali Coast on the northwestern edge of the island, and finally, at about 11 o’clock, to Haena at the end of the highway past Hanalei.

And that’s pretty much the order in which you’ll find them in this book. One exception is the trips that begin on Mohihi Road in the Kokee area. First, the book covers the trips whose trailheads are on the main road that passes through Kokee State Park, Highway 550. Mohihi Road branches off Highway 550, and I’ve put hikes whose trailheads are on Mohihi Road after the hikes whose trailheads are on 550. Mohihi Road starts out going west to east but eventually turns south. Trips starting from Mohihi Road appear in the order you’d find their trailheads as you traveled farther away from Kokee State Park on Mohihi Road. Another exception is the Awaawapuhi Trail, which follows the Nualolo Trail even though the Awaawapuhi trailhead is much farther up Highway 550 than the Nualolo trailhead, and the two trailheads are separated by other trailheads. But I want to keep them together because you can link the Nualolo and Awaawapuhi trails together in a wonderful shuttle or loop trip, and the description of that trip follows the Nualolo and Awaawapuhi trail descriptions. (Those of you who have this book’s first edition will recognize that I’ve reorganized the hikes in this area, as some readers suggested.)

If several trips are located at the same “hour” on the Kauai clock, I’ve tried to organize them so that the trips that start nearer the coast come before those that are farther inland.

How to Read the Trip Descriptions

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

Difficulty: Moderate, tennis shoes recommended.

Highlights: When was the last time you walked across a giant?

Title (pretty self-explanatory).

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 you retrace them for only a proportionally short distance.

Semiloop trips: The trip consists of a loop portion and an out-and-back portion.

Out-and-back trips: This is by far the most common type of trip in this book. You follow trails to a specified destination and then retrace your steps to your starting point.

Shuttle trips: You start at one trailhead and finish at another, “destination” trailhead. They are far enough apart (or walking between them is sufficiently impractical) that you need to have a car waiting for you at your “destination” trailhead or to have someone pick you up there.

Terrain type

Icons give you a general idea of the kind of terrain you’ll be walking. Some hikes offer mixed terrain; for them, I’ve tried to indicate the terrain type where you’ll spend the most walking time:

Inland; hilly or mountainous

Near or at the ocean, such as along a beach or on cliffs above the sea

Location

The inset map illustrates the trip’s general location relative to the rest of Kauai.

Distance: The distance is the total distance you have to walk.

Elevation Gain: This figure is the approximate cumulative elevation gain, and 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 reversed; you go downhill on your way out to the destination, uphill on your return, that is you lose then gain elevation loss/gain.

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. As all the listed topos are 7½’ topos, I shan’t bother to repeat “7½’” for each listing. 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.” See the end of this chapter for the trail map conventions.

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.

An easy trip is more than 1 mile but not more than 2 miles.

A moderate trip is more than 2 miles but not more than 5 miles.

A strenuous trip is more than 5 miles.

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

Some trips just aren’t safe if you’re not wearing boots with 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. Bare feet are never safe, in my opinion, except perhaps on a less-used beach. 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 Kauai for!

Driving instructions: This gives you instructions for driving to the trailhead, usually in terms of driving from Lihue. You may be staying anywhere on Kauai, but Lihue is a convenient reference point. Be sure you have a good road map of Kauai to supplement these instructions.

Permit required: A few 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 “Permits” for addresses.

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 or 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 marked the route by tying tags of colored plastic ribbon to the plants along the route. You navigate by moving from tag to tag.

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 Kauai myth, for example—related to the trip which I hope will add to your enjoyment of the trip. Perhaps there’ll be a bit more information about the plants or the geology in the area. I put most of the supplemental information at the end so that it wouldn’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 very easy hikes, so the supplemental information is often part of the main description in those hikes.)

Icon key

General information including local history

Myths and legends

Geologic and hydrologic

Fauna—land and water

Flora

Heads Up!

Hiking in any wilderness or backcountry area involves potential risks that every hiker must be aware of and respect. The fact that a trail is described in this book is not a representation that it will be safe for you. Trails vary greatly in difficulty and in the degree of conditioning and agility one needs to enjoy them safely. Routes may have changed or conditions may have deteriorated since the descriptions were written, particularly in a climatic zone as volatile as the Hawaiian islands.

Wilderness Press attempts to address these changes with each new edition but every season, every year, every storm front or weather pattern, has an immediate impact on terrain, thus altering trails and instantly dating the book. A trail that is safe on a dry day or for a highly conditioned, agile, and properly equiped hiker may be completely unsafe and inappropriate for someone less prepared or for an exquisitely prepared hiker who runs into an unpredictably adverse weather condition (such as the hurricanes that devastated Kauai in 1982 and 1992).

Minimize your risks by being knowledgeable, prepared, and alert. Be aware of your limitations and of conditions existing whenever and wherever you hike. If conditions are dangerous, or if you are not prepared to deal with them safely, choose a different hike! It’s better to have wasted a drive than to be the subject of a rescue. And, on Kauai, no drive is ever truly a waste!

We do not wish to scare you off the trails. Millions of people have safe and enjoyable hikes every year. However, one element of the beauty, freedom, and excitement of any outdoor adventure is the presence of risks that do not confront us at home. When you hike you assume those risks. They can be met safely only if you exercise your own independent judgment and common sense.