About this permit
Hawaiʻi Volcanoes requires a backcountry permit year round for every overnight, and day hikers do not need one. The quota for each area is 16 visitors per night, raised by the occupancy of the cabin where there is one. A single permit covers up to 12 people.
Permits can be reserved up to 90 days in advance, with new dates released daily at 7:00 am Hawaii time. Seventy-five percent of each area's quota goes online 90 days out and the remaining 25 percent is held for in-person pickup starting 7 days before entry. You pick the permit up at the backcountry office and must carry a printed copy.
The route
The coastal sites are the heart of this permit. Halapē is reached in 8.0 miles from Hilina Pali Overlook, 8.5 or 9.2 miles from the Mau Loa o Maunaulu trailhead, or 11.3 miles from Puʻuloa, with a maximum elevation change between trailhead and campsite of 3,000 feet. Keauhou, ʻĀpua Point and Kaʻaha spread along the same coast.
Kaʻaha, Halapē and Keauhou have three-walled primitive shelters with roof catchment tanks, which is the only water out there and is not always in them. Everyone treats what they take.
Inland, Nāpau sits in the rift zone below Puʻu ʻŌʻō. Up high, the Mauna Loa Cabin and Puʻuʻulaʻula (Red Hill) Cabin sit on the flanks of a 13,677 foot volcano, where bunks go first come first served on arrival and severe weather closures are routine.
Why it matters
This is the only backcountry in the National Park System that gets rewritten by eruptions. Sites open and close as flows move, the permit office wants to know who is out there in case of an eruption, tsunami or earthquake, and the shelters at Halapē and Keauhou stand where the 1975 earthquake dropped the coast into the sea.
The feeling
The Kaʻū Desert is black on black, hot enough to feel through boot soles, and completely without a tree. You walk for hours and the only landmarks are ahu, little stacked rock cairns. Then the pali steps down, the trade wind arrives, and Halapē appears below you as a smear of green on a black shore.
