Kalalau Trail Travel Logs

Will Schumacher will never forget the remarkable series of events that led to broken neck as well as his rescue. Will was on an annual church outing to Kalalau Beach on Friday, August 29, 2014 where he was jumping and playing in the waves.

Over Spring break, Ikaika and I decided to hike Hawaii’s best known trail: Kalalau. The trail is 11 miles long one way and ends at a famous camp spot. Originally planned as a 4 day and 3 night event, we ended up shortening it to 2 days and 1 night while still completing all of the 22 miles, camping at the beach, visiting one of the major waterfalls, and capturing the Milky Way along the way.

On Friday, April 26, my wife Patricia and I (and of course the kids) took an island hopper from Honolulu with our friend Eric Wong and his student Guo Jia (Tim) to Kauai. The he sight of us checking into an airport is amusing. We had four huge bags to check (two large Samsonite bags and two large duffel bags), four rather large carry-on bags, and two child car seats – two mountains of luggage and two kids in a double stroller.

The Na Pali coast is located on the north coast of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The Pali or cliffs, are a magnificently rugged region of deep and narrow valleys ending abruptly at the sea. Waterfalls and whitewater streams sculpt these narrow valleys while the sea carves sheer cliffs. Stone walled terraces, one thousand years old, are in the valleys where early Polynesians once lived and cultivated taro (the Hawaiian equivalent of the potato)