Haleakalā

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.