Kipahulu

Most people who make the drive to Hana turn around once they reach the town, satisfied and a little exhausted, and I understand why — by that point you’ve been driving for three hours and the idea of another forty minutes on an even narrower road sounds like punishment. We pushed on to Kipahulu anyway, on the advice of a bartender in Pa’ia who told us, with real conviction, that we’d regret stopping short. He was entirely right.

Past ‘Ohe’o, Past the Crowds

Kipahulu is the remote southern district of Haleakalā National Park, reached by continuing past Hana on a road that narrows further, hugs the cliffside, and eventually turns to a one-lane stretch shared with cattle trucks. The reward is ‘Ohe’o Gulch — sometimes marketed as the Seven Sacred Pools, a name the National Park Service now discourages because there are more than seven and none are especially sacred, just a series of stream pools stepping down toward the ocean through black volcanic rock.

We swam in the lower pools near the ocean, cold and clear and entirely worth the detour on their own, but the real destination lay uphill.

The Pipiwai Trail

The Pipiwai Trail climbs four miles round trip through a landscape that changes character every ten minutes — first a shaded forest of banyan roots thick as a man’s torso, then a stretch of open grassland, then a bamboo forest so dense the light turns entirely green and the stalks knock together overhead in a rhythm that isn’t quite wind and isn’t quite music. Lia said walking through it felt like being inside an instrument. I didn’t disagree.

The trail ends at Waimoku Falls, a 400-foot ribbon of water dropping down a sheer volcanic amphitheater, loud enough that conversation becomes pointless the last hundred meters. We stood at the base in a fine mist thrown off by the impact, said nothing for a while, and started the walk back only when the light began to fail.

When to go: Go early and commit to the full drive past Hana — the trail is best done before midday heat and before afternoon rain turns the upper sections slick. Bring more water than you think you’ll need.