The signs saying “kapu”, “keep out”, “private road”, and “no entry” all seemed to deter hikers from entering Ka’au Crater. What really gave us pause, after driving into Palolo Valley and parking at the end of Waiomao Road, was the two large barking dogs that sat in the middle of the road. After debating if we should hike another trail, my friend picked up a large stick and grabbed my can of bug spray, in case the dogs turned out to be more bite than bark. We took the left road which leads to the trailhead and the dogs left us alone.

First waterfall

We edged our way around to the left of the watershed fence, walked down a short paved road which eventually turned into the trail that took us to Waiomao stream and deep into the lush green Palolo valley. There is also a metal water pipe that runs along most of the trail and leads you straight to the first waterfall. We climbed down to the pool of the first waterfall from the trail and foolishly tried to blaze on our own trail to the top on the right of the waterfall, we did not succeed. Needless to say, the trail continues up the left side of the waterfall, after you climb back up from the pool and get away from all the mosquitoes.

Top of the first waterfall

We crossed the top of the first waterfall and peered over the edge to get a look, not too close, as we didn’t want to be doing a swan dive 40 feet down.

Second waterfall

The second waterfall looked just as nice as the first one, and for some reason had less mosquitoes. We followed the trail to the right to get to the top of the waterfall, there is a narrow ledge we had to walk across but we had tree roots and ropes to help us out.

Top of second waterfall

At the top of the second waterfall is a good sized boulder that has a memorial plaque for Heidi Marie Page, whose life seemed tragically cut short.

Third waterfall

We hit the third and final waterfall, which stretched the longest as the water cascaded from the crater down the side of the mountain. We started from the left hand side and eventually crossed over to the right hand side with the assistance of ropes and made our way up to the crater rim.

Lanipo Trail

We saw the still visible scars from the small plane crash off Lanipo Trail that happened back in January of 2010.

Ka'au Crater

When we reached the crater rim, we had our first good look inside the crater. Ka’au crater is a bowl shaped crater that collects water in a marshy environment that in turn feeds the three waterfalls. It looked surreal and out of place in a volcanic crater.

Windward view

We made it to the summit of the ridge and was treated to an amazing view of the Windward side complete with rolling clouds. After taking a break, we went back down the rim. There is another trail at the top of the third waterfall that took us down into the valley, so we didn’t have to climb back down the waterfalls. The entire hike took us about six hours and when we got back to the trailhead, the two dogs were still there and one of them actually chased us for a short distance. We took the hint and piled into our cars and went home for the day.