Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

April 17, 2026

3055m

Maui, HI

As an island’s high point with over 3000 m elevation Haleakalā, the highest peak on Maui is also one of the “World’s Top 100” by prominence. A paved road runs all the way to the very summit so from peak-bagging perspective this is rather a “giver”, but the road closure can happen at any time for who-knows-what reasons. Most parties would book their flights months ahead of time so the summit is still not a guaranteed thing. In the case of this year the road had been closed for almost a month in March due to some historical flooding damages, but opened up a week or two prior to my arrival. It didn’t make a difference for me because I didn’t book the flights until they fixed the roads.

I did this trip with Clair mostly to celebrate her graduation from university but I wouldn’t come to Maui just for the hotel and the beaches. There are 3 prominent peaks (with at least 1000 m prominence) accessible from our stays in “West Maui”, and I planned to get all of them in this short trip. Clair would only join me for the 2nd objective namely Haleakalā, as this would be a drive-up. The other two (Pu‘u Kukui and Lāna‘ihale) would be too much for her. The plan was simply for me to rent a car and drive us to the summit but then I saw my driver’s license had expired for over 4 months AFTER boarding the flight. I did some last minute digging on the internet and the conclusion was zero chance of renting a car without a license or with a “L” license (Clair’s). There’s also essentially no public transit on this island, so we would be solely relying on Uber and Lyft. To further complicate things the Uber and Lyft drivers aren’t allowed to drive up past the park’s gate which would put us more than 15 km away from the summit. I wouldn’t mind to walk this road or take one of the trails but again, 30 km hiking would be too much for Clair.

I thought about hitch-hiking but this peak was the main objective of the trip and the success had to be a “sure” thing. In the end I opted to spend some money to solve the problems. Instead of hiring a private driver for a full day I booked us a biking tour which costed about 250 USD per person. This was as cheap of a deal as I could find. The tour company would drive us to the summit, and then give us the bikes to ride down this mountain for as much as we were allowed. I thought this would make the day a bit more memorable than plainly driving to the summit. Our first two nights were based in Camp Olowalu so we still needed to take a Uber to Haiku and that costed over 50 USD. Upon arriving we realized that they didn’t even have their own office so that’s probably why they were rather cheap (by Hawaiian standard anyway). The planned starting time was 8 am and everyone showed up on time.

Clair and I were sitting on the very back so we could hardly hear the driver talking, so we mostly just watched the views. We stopped at the viewpoint underneath Red Hill for some photos of the crater and then proceeded onward to the summit. We did do a quick walk around the crater but the “hiking” time was less than a few minutes. We then drove back down to the park’s gate as biking is currently not permitted inside the park.

The first portion of the biking tour was the “29 switchbacks” which was quite cool. Clair was worrying about the biking as she hadn’t biked by much, but it turned out to be rather chill. Biking downhill on paved road is literally nothing. We were then transported down the ranch zone in the vehicle again, as biking was not permitted there neither. The last portion of the biking past Makawao back to Haiku was actually the hardest due to several uphill sections. I also had to pull out the Google Map a few times to navigate, and I probably made one navigation error as the route we took was different than the one we drove up in the morning. The result was crossing a ravine with some steady uphills, and Clair was not very stoked about that. We also had to rush towards the end as the landowners of Pu‘u Kukui wanted me to meet up at 2:30 pm somewhere in Kapalua. There’s not much time for lunch as a result.

The Lyft ride to Kapalua on the NW corner of Maui was about 100 USD but we did get there in time. Another meeting later we were able to come to some agreements in how to proceed with this trespassing thing, and then Clair and I took another Lyft ride back down to Kaanapali to check into the hotel. Clair paid the two nights of expensive stays (over 1000 CAD) and we spent the rest of the evening exploring the area in the immediate vicinity. My peak-bagging mission hadn’t finished yet as the next day I would get up early for the ferry ride to Lanai for the island’s high point.