Haleakala National Park

Hiking, stargazing, watching spectacular sunrises and sunsets are all fantastic reasons to visit Haleakala National Park. The summit is 10,023 feet and offers magnificent views of a stunning Mars-like landscape….assuming the clouds allow you to take in the view. Unfortunately for us, the weather did not cooperate while we were visiting Haleakala. Cold rain and relentless, heavy cloud cover obscured most of our views and limited the hiking we had planned. When we return to Maui…..someday…..we will definitely be returning to Haleakala to revisit the sites that were literally hidden from our eyes.

If you are following along on our 10 day itinerary, you will know that we are on day 4 of our vacation and we had spent the morning at the Garden of Eden Arboretum in Haiku. We drove to Grandma’s Coffee House in Kula for lunch. I actually do not remember what I ate, but I do remember liking desert. It is a very casual, laid back café. It is also right by a gas station, which is important if you are planning on driving into Haleakala National Park. The park does not sell gas or food, so fill up both your belly and your tank before you go. The visitor centers do have bathrooms, always a plus!

The drive into the park in a series of switchbacks. It takes about 45 minutes to drive up to the summit, more if traffic is bad. Our first stop was the Halemauu Trail, it is located between mile marker 14 and 15. Signage is very good in the park and all of the parking areas are easy to locate.

The trail is 2.25 miles round trip with a 400 foot elevation change. It ends at a gate at the crater floor, when you reach it, you head back up. We only went about 1/4 mile before we decided to head back. The rain, even though it was fairly light, would not let up. It was making the rocky path very slippery and difficult to navigate. Since we didn’t want to be ‘one of those people’ that you hear about on the news who had to be rescued because they broke their ankle hiking in inclement weather we decided to turn back. We thought we might be able to give it a try the next day, so we moved on to Leleiwi Overlook.

The trail to the Leleiwi Overlook is only 1/2 mile round trip, with a 100 foot elevation change. It is a quick and easy hike. It ends at an overlook of a crater. There is a covered pergola at the viewing area, which is very nice if it happens to be raining.

Displayed above are of the clouds that we hiked through. It was like being in an airplane flying through clouds, minus the airplane. On the plus side, it was very cool to hike through the clouds. On the minus side, we couldn’t see very much….besides clouds.

We did make it to the overlook before it started to rain again. I was very excited when I saw the rainbow because I was hoping to experience the Brocken Specter, which sometimes occurs in the afternoon, where you see yourself reflected on the clouds and encircled in a rainbow. No such luck for us, but the rainbow was pretty.

The clouds were continually rolling by us and a few times we caught very brief glimpses of the crater. By this time, I found the clouds annoying because I really wanted to get a good look at the landscape of Haleakala and it was just not to be. Next up was the summit to watch the sunset. Luckily, we had plenty of time because there was a car accident on the road up to the summit. There are so many warnings about driving slowly and the fact that emergency personnel can not get to the park for 45 minutes that you would think people would be very cautious while driving. We could see the accident from the parking lot, so we just hung out in the parking lot with some other tourists until someone started directing traffic around the accident.

The summit is spectacular, even when all you see is clouds. There is a large, heated structure that you can stand in and wait for the sun to set. Once it gets close to time, you can go stand out on the edge and get a front row view of the sunset. It is cold on the summit, do not go up wearing shorts and t-shirts, unless you want to be so cold that you can’t possibly enjoy yourself. We watched people standing out in the freezing rain for 45 minutes before the sun set. We could not understand why they were doing it, especially the ones wearing shorts, when there is a heated glass structure to wait in. If it is very cold, or raining very hard, you can still see the sunset from the structure.

From the viewing structure you can easily see the Haleakala Observatory. The observatories are not open to the public.

We walked over to the ridge with 5 minutes to go on our sunset countdown. It was a good thing I had looked up the time of the sunset because there were so many clouds that no one could actually be sure that the sun was setting.

Yep, that’s it, in all its cloudy glory. Now, I actually thought it was hysterical, possibly because I had all ready seen a phenomenal sunset on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, so I wasn’t disappointed. As I was standing there with my husband I said, “Wow, isn’t that the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?” and the group of people standing next to us burst out laughing. Then I told them I was going to point out the sunset so we would know what we were looking at in our pictures. We were all laughing so hard and when we left, they were busy pointing out the sunset for their own pictures.

The next morning we were planning on going up for the sunrise. If you plan on doing a sunrise visit, you must purchase a ticket in advance, or you will not be allowed in the park. This procedure began in February 2018 to manage the number of visitors. You can make reservations 60 days in advance, online only. You must still pay the entrance fee, $25, to get into the park. I believe it only cost $1 for the sunrise reservation, but here is the link to the page where you can find more information. By the time we got back to Kula Lodge we were exhausted. The 24 hour/4 plane trips to get to Maui, United Airlines disaster, had finally caught up with us. Since the weather forecast for the summit was cloudy and rainy again for the morning, we figured that we would probably not even see the sunrise, we’d just be watching clouds again, so we decided to skip it. Again, just one more reason for us to go back.

I was very disappointed that the weather did not cooperate with us while we were visiting this part of the park, but that was beyond our control. I also found myself wishing that we would have skipped the Garden of Eden Arboretum and spent more time at Haleakala. Should we ever go back, I would schedule Haleakala before going down to Hana and I would give ourselves one extra day, so if weather is an issue, we’d have one extra chance of being able to see what we came to see.

My advice to you if you go: wear hiking boots, bring water and snacks, wear layers (at the sunset I was wearing long underwear, jeans, t-shirt, fleece jacket, thermal rain jacket, hat and gloves), bring hiking sticks and something to protect your camera if it should start raining (which it does frequently). The landscape and craters are supposed to be stunning, if you can see them, so try to do at least a few of the shorter hikes in the park.

If you are interested in comparing Haleakala National Park with Volcanoes National Park you can check out the links below. As always, wishing you happy travels and fantastic adventures in this thing called life.

Walking Through the Thurston Lava Tube

Hiking Across Kilauea Crater

The Sulphur Banks

Halema’umau’u Crater

Holei Sea Arch

(All pictures are available at full resolution as Fine Art Prints or Digital Downloads for purchase through Alamy. If you see something you like, click on the link. If you are unable to find it, use the Contact Me page and I will make sure the image is available.)

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