Trail
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Four miles through a banyan, a boardwalk bamboo forest and two stream bridges, ending under a 400-foot waterfall.
Photo: Jackie Frost/ NPS PhotoPublic domain
The Pīpīwai Trail is the best hike on Maui that most visitors never do, and the only reason is geography: the trailhead sits in the Kīpahulu District of Haleakalā National Park, about ten miles and thirty minutes past Hāna town on Highway 31. Getting there is a three-hour drive from Kahului before you have walked a step, which filters out everyone doing the Hāna road as a checklist.
It is four miles round trip with about 800 feet of climb, and the park suggests two and a half to five hours. Five is not padding. The gradient is steady rather than brutal, but the surface is roots, mud, wet rock and occasional stone steps, and you will stop repeatedly because the trail changes character every half mile.
At roughly half a mile a short spur reaches an overlook of Makahiku Falls, which drops around 185 feet into a gorge. You see it side-on from across the valley; there is no safe way down and people have died trying. A little further on, the trail passes under an enormous banyan, aerial roots down to the ground across a wide section of the path, and the light goes green.
Then two footbridges over Palikea Stream, then the bamboo. The bamboo forest is the part people remember: a dense stand tall enough to close over the trail entirely, with a boardwalk laid through it because the ground below is permanently waterlogged. In wind the culms knock against each other, which is a sound rather than a view, and it goes on for the better part of half a mile.
Out the far side, the valley narrows and Waimoku Falls appears at the head of it, 400 feet down a sheer horseshoe of lava wall. The last stretch involves a rocky, braided path along the stream bed. Signs warn about rockfall at the base and they are not decorative.
No reservation is needed for Kīpahulu. The park entrance fee covers it.
Follow the Hāna Highway to Hāna town, then continue south on Highway 31 for about ten miles — roughly thirty minutes — to the Kīpahulu Visitor Center near mile marker 42. The mile markers count down on this stretch, so you will pass 45 (Wailua Falls) before 42.
Total drive from Kahului is about three hours without stops, and nobody drives it without stops. From Pāʻia, about two and three quarter hours. Leave early.
Parking is in the park lot at the visitor centre, and the Pīpīwai trailhead is across the road from it. The lot is not large and fills through the middle of the day in peak season; arriving before 10am usually solves it.
This is a district of Haleakalā National Park, so the standard entrance fee applies and covers you for three days across both districts. No reservation is needed for Kīpahulu at any hour.
This is a rainforest valley below a mountain that catches enormous rainfall, and the stream you walk beside responds to weather you cannot see. Flash flooding is the real hazard on this trail, not the distance.
At the falls themselves, rockfall is the second hazard. The 400-foot wall sheds rock, and the plunge pool sits directly beneath it. The park posts a warning sign short of the base and asks visitors not to go beyond it or swim in the pool. Wet basalt at the bottom of a waterfall is also as slippery as any surface on the island.
Freshwater in Hawaiʻi carries a leptospirosis risk. Do not drink from the stream, and keep open cuts out of it.
Start the hike by mid-afternoon at the very latest. It gets dark quickly in a deep valley on the windward coast, the trail has no lighting, and you still have a three-hour drive home on a road with 620 curves. A 9am or 10am start is the sane plan, which in practice means leaving Pāʻia around 6:30am or staying overnight in Hāna.
Trailhead to 0.5 miles. Out of the car park across the highway from the Kīpahulu Visitor Center, climbing steadily on a wide dirt track through grass and guava. Views open back down to the coast behind you. A signed spur on the right reaches the Makahiku Falls overlook — go, it takes two minutes.
0.5 to 1 mile. Into forest. The path narrows, the roots begin, and you pass under the banyan, which is large enough that people walk past looking for a waterfall and miss that they are standing under the landmark.
1 to 1.5 miles. Two footbridges cross Palikea Stream with gorge views upstream and down. This is the point to look at the water and make a judgement about conditions.
1.5 to 1.8 miles. The bamboo forest, entered abruptly through a gap. Boardwalk sections keep you out of the mud. The canopy closes, the light drops, and everything sounds different.
1.8 to 2 miles. Out of the bamboo into an open, boulder-strewn valley head, following the stream over rock to the base of Waimoku Falls.
Then back the way you came, which is faster downhill and considerably muddier if it has rained while you were up there. Most people are surprised by how long the return still takes.
The Kīpahulu Visitor Center sits between the two things worth doing here. The Pīpīwai Trail goes uphill from the road. The Kūloa Point Trail, a half-mile loop down to ʻOheʻo Gulch and the sea cliffs, goes the other way and takes about thirty minutes. One entrance fee covers both, and doing both is the right call given how far you have driven.
Note that swimming in the pools at ʻOheʻo has been closed until further notice. If someone in your group is here for the swim, that is worth knowing before the three-hour drive rather than after.
For the return: most people go back the way they came, north through Hāna and along the Hāna Highway, roughly three hours to Kahului. The alternative is continuing south on Piʻilani Highway around the dry side of Haleakalā to Kīhei, which is shorter in miles but narrow, remote, sometimes unsealed and excluded from most rental car agreements. In daylight, in dry conditions, with a confident driver, it is a genuinely interesting road. After a long hike, late in the day, it is not the moment.
The best answer to all of this is to stay a night in Hāna. It turns a punishing round trip into two relaxed half-days and puts you at the trailhead at opening.
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Four miles round trip with around 800 feet of climb, and the park allows two and a half to five hours. It is a moderate hike rather than a hard one — the gradient is steady — but the surface is roots, mud, wet rock and a rough stream-bed section at the end, so it takes longer than the distance suggests. Reasonably fit children manage it. Trainers or hiking shoes, not sandals.
No. The Kīpahulu District of Haleakalā National Park has no reservation system at any hour — that requirement applies only to the summit between 3am and 7am. You pay the standard park entrance fee, around $30 per vehicle, which is valid for three days and also covers the Summit District. If you drove up Haleakalā earlier in the week, keep the receipt and you may already be covered.
No, and you should not try. The park posts a rockfall warning short of the base of the falls and asks visitors not to go beyond it or enter the plunge pool. A 400-foot lava wall sheds rock, the pool sits directly under it, and the surrounding basalt is extremely slippery. Swimming in the pools at ʻOheʻo further down the valley is also closed until further notice.
If you are physically able to do the hike, yes — it is the best walk on Maui, and the bamboo forest and the 400-foot falls at the end are not replicated anywhere else on the island. The honest caveat is the drive: ten miles and thirty minutes beyond Hāna, three hours from Kahului each way. It works best as part of an overnight in Hāna, or as a day where the trail, not the roadside stops, is the point.
Light rain is normal here and the hike carries on. Heavy rain is different: Palikea Stream flash floods from rainfall higher in the valley that you cannot see, and the crossings become dangerous within minutes. If the water is brown, carrying debris, or higher than when you passed it, stop and wait on the high side rather than crossing. Rangers close the trail in high water and post conditions at the trailhead.