Related: Road to Hāna Guide, Haleakalā National Park Guide, Waiʻānapanapa State Park
You hear the bamboo before you see it.
About a mile (1.6 km) up the trail, everything goes dim and green, and the stalks overhead start knocking together in the wind. It sounds like a hundred wooden wind chimes that nobody bothered to tune.
That is the Pīpīwai Trail, the 4-mile (6.4 km) round trip waiting at the far end of the Road to Hāna. It climbs past one waterfall, under a giant banyan, and through that bamboo to 400-foot (122 m) Waimoku Falls.
You will see it spelled Pipiwai Trail on most maps and tour sites. Same trail, minus the kahakō.
The catch is the commute. This hike sits in the Kīpahulu District of Haleakalā National Park, about 12 miles (19 km) past Hāna town. The park service pegs the drive from Kahului at roughly four hours.
We think it earns every curve. This guide covers what is open right now, the fees, the drive, and each stop on the trail. It also covers how to keep a great day from turning into a long, hungry one.
Pīpīwai Trail Quick Reference
📍 Kīpahulu Visitor Center, Haleakalā National Park, near mile marker 42 on Hāna Highway (Highway 31), Hāna, HI 96713
Cost: $30 per private vehicle, good for three days at both park districts. Cards only, because the park does not take cash.
Trail: 4 miles (6.4 km) round trip with 800 feet (244 m) of elevation gain, rated moderately strenuous on the park’s hiking page.
Time: most hikers need 2 to 3 hours on the trail. Add 30 minutes for the Kūloa Point loop and the pools overlook.
Hours: the district is open 24 hours, and the visitor center’s park store runs 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily. Treat this as a daylight hike.
Reservations: none for the trail. The sunrise reservation everybody talks about is for the summit, which is a different district on the other side of the mountain.
Facilities: limited right now. Read the next section before you order that second coffee in Pāʻia.
Phone: 808-572-4400 for the park. Kīpahulu is remote, and the park service says emergency medical help is at least an hour away.
What Is Open at Kīpahulu in Early October 2026
Good news first. The park’s hiking page lists the Pīpīwai Trail as open, all the way to the Waimoku Falls viewing area.
Now for the part that affects your morning. As of October 3, 2026, the park’s alerts and conditions page says the Kīpahulu restrooms and water stations are closed for emergency repairs.
Vault toilets are still available at the Kīpahulu Campground, a short walk south of the visitor center. So nobody is stranded, but nobody is refilling a bottle either.
Bring all the water you plan to drink, and then stash one more bottle in the car. You will be glad to find it on the drive home.
The Pools of ʻOheʻo are closed to swimming as well. You can still look down on them from the Kūloa Point Trail, which we cover below.
Hurricane Lowell passed west of the islands in early September and hit Kauaʻi hard. The park alerts we read on October 3 list no storm closures at Kīpahulu.
Conditions change fast out here, especially after heavy rain. Check that page the night before, because like most long drives on the neighbor islands, cell service thins out well before you arrive.
Getting There: The Drive Is Half the Hike
Kīpahulu is reached by the Hāna Highway, which runs as Route 36, then 360, then 31. There is no shortcut and no public bus.
The summit and Kīpahulu districts do not connect by road either, so do not let the map app talk you into anything creative.
The famous stretch from Kahului to Hāna covers about 52 miles (84 km), with 620 curves and 59 bridges. Most of those bridges are one lane, which means a lot of polite waving.
From Hāna town, keep going about 12 more miles (19 km). The road narrows, the jungle leans in over the pavement, and the mile markers start counting down.
Look for the big brown park sign near mile marker 42. The park’s own listed address reads mile marker 41, so watch for the sign instead of counting markers.
Fill the tank in Kahului or Pāʻia before you start. There is no gas, no food, and no EV charger in the park, and the pumps in Hāna charge a premium for the convenience.
Roadwork is a fact of life on this highway. The state’s Maui roadwork page lists weekday lane closures near Waikamoi, Keʻanae, and Wailua for the week of October 5, so pad your schedule.
What about the back road past Kaupō? Many rental agreements restrict that stretch, and Maui County has posted closures on it in 2026. Unless you have checked both, plan to return the way you came.
Rather let somebody else handle the curves? Viator’s Pīpīwai Trail tours page gathers the guided Road to Hāna options in one place.
Ask how much trail time you get before you book. A full-day van tour has a lot of stops to fit in, and the whole hike needs close to three hours.
Parking and Your First Ten Minutes
Pay at the Kīpahulu entrance station on your way in. When the booth is closed, the self-pay machine beside it takes credit cards, so keep one handy.
Parking is free once you are in, but the lot is not huge. The day-trip wave from the resort side tends to roll in late morning, so an early start buys you a stall without circling.
Do not panic if you have to loop once. People finish the short Kūloa Point walk constantly, and stalls turn over faster than you would expect.
Step inside the visitor center before you hike. Rangers are there to answer questions and talk story, and they will know which stretch is muddiest that morning.
Then lock the car, leave nothing visible on the seats, and go find the trailhead sign.
Fees and Passes: One Receipt, Two Districts
Let’s talk money, because nobody enjoys a surprise at the gate. Entry is $30 per private vehicle, $25 per motorcycle, or $15 a person on foot or bicycle.
Keiki under 16 do not need a pass on the per-person rate, which takes a little sting out of it for families.
Leave the cash in your wallet. The park is cashless, so bring a credit or debit card. The full list lives on the park’s fees page.
That receipt works harder than it looks. It is good for three days at both districts, so the same $30 covers a summit visit later in your trip.
Hold onto it like a boarding pass, because the floor of a rental car eats small pieces of paper for breakfast.
The Hawaiʻi Tri-Park Annual Pass makes sense for a multi-island trip. It costs $55 and covers Haleakalā, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes, and Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau for 12 months.
U.S. citizens and residents also get two more fee-free days in 2026: October 27 and Veterans Day on November 11. Expect company on the trail both days.
The Trail, Stop by Stop
The trailhead sits a few steps from the visitor center. You walk a short connector, cross the Hāna Highway on foot, and the climb starts right away.
Look both ways twice at that crossing. Drivers coming around the bend are admiring the scenery, and you are not the scenery they are admiring.
Makahiku Falls Overlook
The first half mile (0.8 km) is the steepest part of the day, on a rooty dirt path with stairs in several spots. Your calves will file a complaint and then settle down.
The payoff is the Makahiku overlook, where a waterfall nearly 200 feet (61 m) tall drops into a deep green gorge. After a dry week it can thin out to a ribbon, so set your expectations by the weather.
Short on time, or hiking with small keiki? The park service suggests this stretch as its own short outing: 1 mile (1.6 km) round trip and about an hour.
The Banyan Tree
A few minutes past the overlook, the trail walks you right under a giant banyan. Its limbs spread overhead like the rafters of a church, with aerial roots hanging all the way down to the dirt.
Everybody takes the same photo here, and everybody should. Just stay off the roots, since thousands of boots a year add up.
The Bridges and the Stream
Around the one-mile (1.6 km) mark, two footbridges carry you over the stream. Stop in the middle and look down into the gorge, where the water has worn smooth bowls into the dark rock.
Native freshwater shrimp and a goby that climbs waterfalls live in these streams. The park invites you to spot them from the trail, which is a fine excuse to catch your breath.
The Bamboo Forest
Then the light changes. The bamboo closes in on both sides, so tall and so thick that noon feels like early evening.
A wooden boardwalk carries you over the muddiest stretch while the stalks creak and clack overhead. On a breezy day it gets loud enough to pause a conversation.
The boardwalk turns slick when it is wet, and it is wet a lot. Slow down and soak it in, since this is the stretch you drove four hours for.
Please do not carve your name into the bamboo. Plenty of people already have, and “Kyle 2019” has not improved the forest one bit.
Waimoku Falls
The bamboo lets you out into open forest, the trail crosses the stream a couple more times, and then the cliff appears. Waimoku Falls drops 400 feet (122 m) down a sheer wall of dark lava rock.
The trail ends at a signed viewing area about 2 miles (3.2 km) from where you started. On a good flow day you will feel the mist on your face from there.
You will also see people walk past the sign to stand under the falls. Don’t do it! Rocks come off that cliff with no warning, and the water carries more down from above.
The viewing area gives you the whole show anyway. Tilt your head back, find the top, and try to fit it all in one photo. Good luck.
Kūloa Point and the Pools of ʻOheʻo
Back at the visitor center, the Kūloa Point Trail is a half-mile (0.8 km) loop with only 80 feet (24 m) of elevation change. Think of it as dessert after the main course.
The path passes a Hawaiian cultural demonstration area and archaeological sites, then opens onto the coast where ʻOheʻo Gulch meets the ocean. Surf pounds the black rock while the pools step down the gulch behind you.
You may know this spot as the Seven Sacred Pools. That nickname is widely traced to hotel marketing in the 1940s, and there are more than seven pools anyway. The place name is ʻOheʻo.
The pools are closed to entry because of flash floods and falling rock, so this is a look-with-your-eyes stop. We get the disappointment, since plenty of old guidebooks still promise a swim.
Kīpahulu protects several intact ahupuaʻa, the traditional land divisions that run from the mountain to the sea. People have lived along this coast for hundreds of years, and the culture here is very much alive.
So leave every rock, wall, and structure the way you found it. A stacked-rock photo is not worth rearranging somebody’s history.
When to Start and How Long to Give It
Here is the math that catches people. Four hours out, three hours on the trail, and four hours back add up to a very long day before a single banana bread stop.
Leaving Kahului by 6:30 a.m. puts you at the trailhead ahead of the midday crowd. It also gets you back through the curves while you can still see them.
The sun is down around 6:00 p.m. in October. One-lane bridges in the dark, with tired legs and an empty stomach, are nobody’s favorite Maui memory.
Want the trail more to yourself? Stay a night in Hāna or camp at Kīpahulu, then start hiking while the day-trippers are still buying coffee in Pāʻia.
Pairing this hike with other Road to Hāna stops takes discipline. Pick two or three on the way out, and book anything with a time slot, like Waiʻānapanapa State Park, around the hike.
Rain is part of the deal on this side of the island. A light shower just makes the bamboo shine. Heavy rain upstream is a different story, and that comes next.
Flash Floods, Falling Rock, and the Rules Behind the Signs
Streams here rise fast. Rain falling high on the mountain can send a surge down the gulch while the sky above you is still blue.
The park says flash floods and sudden rock falls can happen at any time. Stay out of the stream, stay behind the signs, and turn around if the water turns brown or loud.
Stay on the marked trail too. Leaving it is illegal in this park, and the forest on either side does not bounce back from shortcuts.
Groups are capped at 12 people, and pets are not allowed on any park trail. Leave the dog with a sitter, because a parked car in Kīpahulu turns into an oven by midmorning.
One more ask: brush the mud off your shoes before and after the hike. Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death, a disease that kills native ʻōhiʻa trees, travels in dirty soil, and Maui’s forests are worth two minutes of scrubbing.
What to Bring and What to Leave Behind
Bring water first, and more than you think you need. With the water stations closed, we would carry at least 2 liters (about half a gallon) per person for the hike alone.
Wear real shoes with grip. The trail is rocky, rooty, and often muddy, and slippers will try to leave you somewhere around the first staircase.
Pack a light rain jacket, sunscreen, and mosquito repellent. The park tells visitors to dress for rain and bring both, and the mosquitoes in the bamboo have clearly read the memo.
Bring lunch and snacks from town, since nothing is sold in the park. A musubi at Waimoku Falls tastes about three times better than one eaten in a parking lot.
A zip bag for your phone earns its spot in the pack. So does a clean shirt for the ride home, and your passengers will thank you.
Leave the drone at the hotel. Drones are banned in national parks, and the bamboo would swallow it anyway.
Staying the Night at Kīpahulu Campground
Facing those curves twice in one day is optional. The Kīpahulu Campground sits about 1/8 mile (0.2 km) south of the visitor center.
Sites run $20 a night, and you will need to book on Recreation.gov, which releases them on a rolling 30-day window. Set a phone reminder if your dates are firm, because there are only about 20 sites.
You can stay up to three nights in a row, which is plenty of time to hike twice.
Be ready for simple camping. There are vault toilets, but no water, no showers, and no outlets, and the park describes the campground as often wet.
The reward is waking up five minutes from the trailhead. You can be standing in the bamboo by 7:00 a.m., with the whole forest clacking just for you.
Hiking Pīpīwai With Keiki
Can keiki handle it? That depends on your keiki. The full hike is 4 miles (6.4 km) with real climbing, stairs, and mud, and no part of it suits a stroller.
Confident walkers of school age usually do fine with snack breaks. A little one in a carrier works for a sure-footed adult, though the stairs and boardwalk demand your full attention.
A shorter family plan works well too. Hike to the Makahiku overlook and the banyan, turn around, then walk the Kūloa Point loop to see the pools.
That version takes about two hours and still delivers a waterfall, a giant tree, and the ocean. Nobody will feel shortchanged at dinner.
Remember that the car-seat crowd has already sat through 620 curves. Build in a long snack stop in Hāna town before you ask anybody small for a hike.
Is the Pīpīwai Trail Worth the Drive?
For most hikers, yes, and by a wide margin. We struggle to name another Maui trail that fits a banyan, a bamboo forest, and a 400-foot (122 m) waterfall into one morning.
It asks a lot in return: an early alarm, a full tank, and patience on the road. Go in knowing that, and the day feels like an adventure instead of a chore.
Check the alerts, pack the water, and start early. Then go stand in that bamboo and listen.
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