Haleakala National Park

This was the tropical, less strenuous version of Yosemite’s 4 mi trail. Anybody here do the 4mi trail roundtrip from the Yosemite Valley up to Glacier Point?

For this hike, you’ll start off above the clouds, and make your way all the way down following the switchback trails. If you have a permit, you can stay overnight at the Holua cabins and make your way back the next day. People do backpack out here, but we only had one day to spare.

Halemauu Trail – Haleakala National Park

To enter the national park, be sure to bring your annual national parks pass, or if you don’t have one, it will be $25 for the entrance fee.

From the parking lot, you’ll be walking down a rocky trail for about a mile or so, then it evens out as you start to hit the main portion of the hike. From here you can see the bottom below, and the beginning of the switchbacks start after the end of this section here:

We were only supposed to go to the lookout and back and then drive further up to do part of the Sliding Sands trail. But when we got to the lookout, I thought,

“How cool would it be to say I sat and ate lunch at the bottom?”

So down we went. The descent to the bottom is actually fairly gradual. It just takes a long time. There’s a lot of plant life to look at as well:

The weather was quite volatile while we were hiking. One side was warm and humid, but as soon as you hit the turn to the other side, you’d be blasted with mist and strong wind. It was pretty fun actually, though I did feel like the varying temperatures would lead to catching a cold. Thankfully, I didn’t.

Slowly descending:

At the bottom, we sat and had a quick snack break near the gates.

A couple came by from the opposite direction where the cabins are. They already hiked 9 miles today from the other way, aiming to finish the last few miles. The husband was gearing up for a Yosemite Half Dome hike, so he was using this as part of his training. We talked a little bit about the difficulty of this hike and about upcoming planned hikes.

We finished up our food and back up we went. It took us about an hour to get to the bottom, and about 2-ish hours to get back to the top. Usually I’m more attentive to how long I’m on a trail, but I was on vacation. As long as I’m not stuck out on a trail after dark without headlamps, I’m good.

The last mile was tiring. I took a break by taking pictures of him taking pictures.

We did end up trying to drop by the Sliding Sands Trailhead but the weather was terrible. It would’ve been really fun to hike in, had we the right gear… but it was pouring with strong gusts of wind, and neither of us had our rain gear. I don’t post videos, but we have a gopro footage of the summit where it was about 5ft of visibility and wind so strong it unzipped jackets.

So back down we went. We managed to get this shot on the way back down:

Most of my post-hiking meals end up being a hamburger, pizza, anything fatty and indulgent. For this day, I met up with my friends and we had burgers at a place called Stews Maui burgers. They didn’t have the combination of ingredients, so I ordered the Kihei burger and added grilled pineapple and grilled mushrooms. It hit the spot!

If I ever go back to Maui, I’m gunning for the Sliding Sands Trail.

Til Next Time.