Haleakala National Park

Most Recent Visit

November 2015

When to Go

You can visit here year-round. We visited in November 2015 and have visited other Hawaiian Islands at different points of the year and the weather is always great as long as you realize you might get some rain from time to time. With that said, this is a 10,000+ foot mountain, so the weather at the top can change quickly and can get very cold (below freezing). You will want to check the forecast before you make the drive up to the summit if that is the part of the park you are interested in and be sure to bring layers.

How to Get Here

Depending on where you are flying from, you may be able to get a direct flight to Kahului on Maui. However, more likely than not you will need to fly into Honolulu first and then fly to Kahului from there. Flights to anywhere in Hawaii are long from the mainland, but once you are there you can easily hop island to island in less than an hour. Once you land in Kahului, you will still have about an hour drive to the main part of the park (the summit road) or about a three-hour drive to the Kipahulu coast area on the Road to Hana. More than likely, you will be heading from the airport to a resort town like Lahaina. From there the summit road is about a 1.5-hour drive from there.

Trip Length

If you are just here to see the National Park, you only need a day or two (if you want to visit both areas of the park). However, if you have come all this way to get to Maui, you probably have other plans besides just the park and you can easily spend a week or more and not get bored. We spent a week in November 2015 and were able to scour the island and see all kinds of sites while also spending time relaxing in the Lahaina area. The Road to Hana, which you can take around to the Kipahula area of the park can take a day by itself.

Where to Stay

You should have plenty of options for places to stay in Maui, but there are not going to be many budget options. We came to Maui to also check out the Maui Invitational basketball tournament and the hotel, the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa, was included in that ticket package (which was not cheap). We’d recommend searching sites like Expedia, Airbnb, or Vrbo to try and find some reasonably priced accommodations which are going to be the most expensive part of your trip to Maui more than likely.

What to Do

For full disclosure, given our trip to Maui was mostly focused on the basketball tournament, we only drove up the park summit road stopping at a few spots along the way for photos and then sat at the top for a couple hours waiting for sunset which never transpired due to weather. We have plenty left to do in this park and have laid out some of those things below.

Get above the clouds

Sunrise

The primary reason that the majority of people visit this park is to see sunrise at the Haleakala summit. It has gotten so popular that you now need a reservation to visit between the hours of 3am to 7am. The majority of the reservations are released 60 days in advance, but there are some that get released 48 hours in advance for those of you who don’t want to plan too far in advance. These do typically sell out fairly quickly, so you’ll want to ready to go once you make the decision to visit the summit for sunrise. We just couldn’t get ourselves out of bed this early, so we attempted to do sunset instead. Keep in mind that this is a 10,000-foot summit, so great weather is not guaranteed, and you could get up in the middle of the night, drive to the summit, and then see no sunrise due to heavy cloud cover or fog.

Sunset

If you can’t get yourself out of bed for sunrise, you can also visit at sunset which is said to be just as spectacular. One positive of sunset is that you don’t need to worry about any sort of reservation. However, this also means you have to fight everyone else for parking spots and they can fill up fast. We decided to avoid this issue by heading up a couple hours before sunset to ensure we would have a parking spot.

Weather is also an issue at sunset as we found out. We got out parking spot, explored a bit, napped and sat around for a couple of hours only to have a bunch of clouds flow in and completely block the sunset view for us. Picture when we arrived vs. after we woke up from our nap for perspective. We will try again in the future!

The silversword is a unique plant found only on a few places in the Hawaiian Islands. Depending on the time of year, you may see them flowering. Make sure to snap a picture as they are declining due to the temperature changes on the volcano.

Hiking

Keonehe‘ehe‘e Trail (11.2 miles one way with 2,427 feet of elevation gain)

We did not have a chance to do this hike, but it is definitely on the list for a future visit. It won’t be an easy hike even though the majority of it is downhill (the last section of the hike is where all the elevation gain is). You’ll also need to park at the end of the trail and hitch hike your way to the start of the trail which might be a turn off for some people. But if you can pull it off, we’ve heard this hike offers unparalleled views as you walk down into the crater. Towards the end as you work your way out of the crater and up to the Halemau’u trailhead (where you should have parked your car), you’ll also see the famous Rainbow Bridge which is a natural land bridge.

Pipiwai Trail to Waimoku Falls (3.4 miles RT with 853 feet of elevation gain)

This is over in the Kipahulu area of the park on the Road to Hana (along the coast). The road was closed while we were in Maui, so we didn’t get a chance to head over to this area. But when we return, this is certainly a trail we are going to check out. The hike is considered moderate and brings you to two waterfalls – Makahiku Falls and Waimoku Falls. The larger highlight of the two is Waimoku Falls which stands at around 400 feet and is really stunning. You’ll also get to walk through a bamboo forest towards the beginning of this trail.