Kauai Trails. Kathy Morey
out going west to east but eventually turns south. Trips starting from Mohihi Road appear in the order you’d find their trailheads as you traveled farther away from Kokee State Park on Mohihi Road. Another exception is the Awaawapuhi Trail, which follows the Nualolo Trail even though the Awaawapuhi trailhead is much farther up Highway 550 than the Nualolo trailhead, and the two trailheads are separated by other trailheads. But I want to keep them together because you can link the Nualolo and Awaawapuhi trails together in a wonderful shuttle or loop trip, and the description of that trip follows the Nualolo and Awaawapuhi trail descriptions. (Those of you who have this book’s first edition will recognize that I’ve reorganized the hikes in this area, as some readers suggested.)
If several trips are located at the same “hour” on the Kauai clock, I’ve tried to organize them so that the trips that start nearer the coast come before those that are farther inland.
How to Read the Trip Descriptions
The trip descriptions are in the following format, and here is what the information in each description means:
Difficulty: Moderate, tennis shoes recommended.
Highlights: When was the last time you walked across a giant?
Title (pretty self-explanatory).
Type
There are four types of trips described:
Terrain type
Icons give you a general idea of the kind of terrain you’ll be walking. Some hikes offer mixed terrain; for them, I’ve tried to indicate the terrain type where you’ll spend the most walking time:
Location
The inset map illustrates the trip’s general location relative to the rest of Kauai.
Distance: The distance is the total distance you have to walk.
Elevation Gain: This figure is the approximate cumulative elevation gain, and counts all the significant “ups” you have to walk, not just the simple elevation difference between the trailhead and the destination. It’s the cumulative gain that your muscles will complain about. Some trips are reversed; you go downhill on your way out to the destination, uphill on your return, that is you lose then gain elevation loss/gain.
Hiking time: This is based on my normal hiking speed, which is a blazing 2 miles/hour.
Topos: The topo or topos listed here are the ones that cover the area you’ll be hiking in on this particular trip. As all the listed topos are 7½’ topos, I shan’t bother to repeat “7½’” for each listing. Topos are strictly optional for the very easy and easy trips but are strongly recommended for the other trips.
Trail map
Only listed if the map cannot be found near the “Description.” See the end of this chapter for the trail map conventions.
Difficulty and suggested shoes
A trip’s difficulty is based first on total distance and second on cumulative elevation gain and rate of gain. Let’s say that the elevation gain is negligible to moderate (it’s never steeper than about 500 feet/mile for any significant distance). In that case:
A very easy trip is 1 mile or less.
An easy trip is more than 1 mile but not more than 2 miles.
A moderate trip is more than 2 miles but not more than 5 miles.
A strenuous trip is more than 5 miles.
If the trip has a section of, say, a half-mile or more where it’s steeper than 500 feet/mile, or if the trail is hard to follow, then I’ve given it the next higher difficulty rating.
Some trips just aren’t safe if you’re not wearing boots with soles that grip and which will give you some ankle support. However, only you live in your body, so you will have to be the final judge of what you can safely wear. Bare feet are never safe, in my opinion, except perhaps on a less-used beach. The standard wording follows:
Tennis shoes recommended
Hiking boots strongly recommended
Hiking boots mandatory—the route is very rough.
Highlights
This gives you an idea of what I think the best features of the trip are. Usually, it’s the scenery—that’s one of the principal things you came to Kauai for!
Driving instructions: This gives you instructions for driving to the trailhead, usually in terms of driving from Lihue. You may be staying anywhere on Kauai, but Lihue is a convenient reference point. Be sure you have a good road map of Kauai to supplement these instructions.
Permit required: A few trips require you to have someone’s permission to camp. This section will tell you what you need permission for, if anything, and whom to apply to. See “Permits” for addresses.
Description: This is the detailed description of the trip as I perceived it. I’ve tried to give you an idea of the more obvious plants and other features you’ll find, where the rough spots are, when you’ll be ascending or descending, where viewpoints are, and what you’ll see from those viewpoints. On some trips, the trail is faint to nonexistent, and the agency in charge has marked the route by tying tags of colored plastic ribbon to the plants along the route. You navigate by moving from tag to tag.
Supplemental information
At the bottom of most of the trips, there’s some extra information about the historical significance of places you’ll see along the route. Or maybe there’s a story—a Kauai myth, for example—related to the trip which I hope will add to your enjoyment of the trip. Perhaps there’ll be a bit more information about the plants or the geology in the area. I put most of the supplemental information at the end so that it wouldn’t interfere too much with the description of the trip itself. I think safety dictates that you give your attention first to the trip and only secondarily to the supplemental information. (That is not a problem with very easy hikes, so the supplemental information is often part of the main description in those hikes.)
Icon key
General information including local history