Hiking the North Shore

This is the walk that justifies the drive west past Haleʻiwa. From the end of Farrington Highway at Mokulēʻia, the trail follows the old railway grade along a shelf between the Waiʻanae range and the sea. It is flat, it is rough underfoot in places where winter swell has torn chunks out of it, and it is completely exposed. About two and a half miles along, you reach a fence.

That fence is the point of the place. Kaʻena Point Natural Area Reserve is ringed by a predator-proof barrier designed to keep rats, mongooses, dogs and cats out of a ground-nesting seabird colony. Behind it, mōlī — Laysan albatross — nest on open sand, sitting on eggs within a few metres of the path. Wedge-tailed shearwaters burrow into the dunes. Hawaiian monk seals, one of the most endangered seals on earth, haul out to sleep on the rocks below. There is a double-door gate you step through, and you close it behind you.

The rules inside are not decorative. Stay on the marked paths, because shearwater burrows collapse under a boot and you will not see them. No dogs, at all, on either side of the fence. Give a resting monk seal a very wide berth — the published guidance is 50 feet, more for a mother with a pup — and if one is on the path, turn around. Do not fly a drone over the colony.

Two practical notes. Winter swell can wash across the lower sections of the trail on a big day, and it has cut the track in the past, so if the ocean is throwing water onto the path, that is your answer. And the point is often described as reachable from both ends: it is, but not in one trip with a car. The Mokulēʻia and Keawaʻula sides are separate trails with separate car parks, and getting from one to the other by road means driving nearly back to Pearl City.

The ʻEhukai pillboxes are the North Shore's short hit. Park at ʻEhukai Beach Park — the same car park everyone uses for Pipeline, so it fills by mid-morning in winter — cross Kamehameha Highway carefully, and find the trailhead behind Sunset Beach Elementary School. The climb is twenty to thirty minutes of roots, red dirt and a couple of knotted ropes on the steeper pitches. The first bunker gives you the view; the second, another ten minutes along the ridge, gives you a better one. Go early. The trail faces east and turns into an oven after mid-morning, and in winter the mud is genuinely hazardous on the descent.

Up on the Pūpūkea plateau, the order matters. Drive up Pūpūkea Road, stop first at Puʻu o Mahuka Heiau State Historic Site, then carry on to the Kaunala trailhead near the Boy Scout camp. The heiau is the largest on Oʻahu and it is a place of worship, not a lookout with a car park — more on that below. The Kaunala loop itself is the most conventional forest walk on this coast: gulch crossings, Cook pine plantation, guava, a stretch of dirt road, and views out over Waimea on the return. It is also muddy for weeks after a wet spell.

Kealia is the one nobody does. It starts from Kawaihāpai Airfield in Mokulēʻia — the field most people know as Dillingham, where the skydiving operates — and switchbacks up the cliff behind it to a plateau around 1,600 feet. There are nineteen or so switchbacks depending on how you count, no shade on any of them, and the reward is an aerial view of the Mokulēʻia coast with parachutes drifting down under you. Access crosses airfield property, so check that the gate route is open on the day rather than assuming.