Kauai HI: Kauai's Famous Hiking

Whatever You Do Take Care of Your Shoes

6000footdrop.com’s visit to Ireland’s 600 foot drop at the Cliffs of Moher and its surrounding burren and bogs had us craving cliffs and bogs -- so we crossed eleven time zones to check out the cliffs and bogs of Hawaii’s Garden Isle of Kauai. Not all of Kauai is sunshine and rainbows.

Hawaii’s Oahu is home to 1,000,000 people (plus tourists in residence.) The Big Island of Hawaii is home to 185,000 people. Maui is home to 155,000 people, and as we reported in 2010, home to the famous road to Hana and the cratered 10,000 foot drop of Mt. Haleakala. Kauai is much more sparsely populated with a Coeur d’Alene-sized population of 65,000. Kauai is the “oldest” of the Hawaiian islands and also the wettest -- a combination yielding a completely green island, carved to stunning proportions by eons of erosion. Here is Wiamea Canyon (”the Grand Canyon of the Pacific”) in the southwest of Kauai -- dropping over 5000 feet from the soaked peaks to the sea.

Wiamea Canyon provides world-class hiking (Sierra Club hiking difficulty ratings of 9 out of 10.) The Awa’awapuhi (ava-ava-pooey) Trail descends three miles from the Wiamea/Koke’e crest west toward the completely un-developed Na Pali coast. Here is the view from the end of the trail -- a 2000 foot drop to the virgin coast.

The only other signs of human life on the ava-ava were choppers -- not quite Apocalypse Now and not quite as obnoxious as a foursome of beached Ukrainians -- but bothersome nonetheless. Here is a rare look down on a heli.

From the north-facing 5000 foot crest of the Wiamea/Koke’e park is the mud-bogged Pihea (pee-hey-ah) Trail -- three miles of shoe-ruining mud-humping to the mist-shrouded Alkali Swamp. The only human disturbances here were a foursome on their Milwaukee Vibrators rumbling right past the end of the road and right onto the park paths! We didn’t stick around long enough to see them bog-down in the mud or roar off a cliff. Here is the view of the 5000 foot drop from the Koke’e crest north toward the Na Pali coast. Perfect for hang gliding or a Spielberg set, but not really Harley-friendly.

Kauai is smaller than Alameda County at only 65 miles in circumference -- but, unlike the other populated Hawaiian islands, there is no road circumnavigating Kauai. Indeed, the road ends in the west at the Pihea Trailhead and it ends in the north at the Ke’e Beach Trailhead -- with 20 miles of no-man’s-land in between -- the stunning cliffs of the Na Pali coast. We took the Hanakapi’ai (hanukkah-pie-i) Trail from the end of the road down the Na Pali Coast to Hanakapi’ai Beach. The trail is muddy but essentially a paved moving sidewalk by comparison to the mud-bogged Pihea Trail. Here is the view from the Hanakapi’ai Trail down the rugged, west-facing Na Pali coastline.

No sense in trying to keep your shoes dry or out of the mud along the way, because you must cross a thigh-deep creek at the end to reach this magnificent, isolated destination -- Hanakapi’ai Beach.

Although there are no hotels at Hanakapi’ai Beach, there are plenty of places to hide.

Hanakapi’ai Beach is a marvelous setting strewn with exhausted fat midwesterners, barefoot locals, backpack-ejected infants, Detroit Tiger and Phish fans, and even a few non-complaining teenagers. 6000footdrop.com loves to under-estimate trail book warnings and flout swimming prohibitions, yet we made it back to submit this report and avoided becoming the next notch on this sign.

For contrast, we also took in the 60 foot drop of the southern Poipu Beach Maha’ulepu (ma-ha-u-lay-poo) Trail, running flat along the coast from Shipwrecks Beach to Keoneloa Bay. Here is Shipwrecks Rock -- perfect for a swan dive.

The Maha’ulepu Trail is an easy five miles out, through grasses, along lithified sand, crossing sacred native sites and even using the cart-path of the Robert Trent Jones Poipu Bay Golf Course for a spell. Of these four big Kauai hikes -- Awa’awapuhi, Pihea, Hanakapi’ai, and Maha’ulepu -- Maha’ulepu is the one least likely to have you tossing your shoes at the end.

So, if your image of Kauai is beaches and sunsets, take along a few extra pairs of shoes and try these big four hikes next time.

See you at the Eddie Vedder ukelele show!