Kalahaku Overlook

Kalahaku Overlook is a crater-rim viewpoint in Haleakalā’s Summit District, with a small shelter above the crater floor. I’d keep it as a second stop if you want another angle on the cinder cones without committing to a hike into the crater. The walk from the lots is about a tenth of a mile.

Two approaches leave the parking areas: one follows a sloped path, and the other uses stairs. The route description does not confirm a fully accessible path for wheelchairs. At the overlook, interpretive panels sit by the open shelter, which has a paved floor, stone walls and a railing along the rim. A vault or composting toilet serves the stop.

From the shelter, look across bands of red, orange, yellow, tan and black rock, with sparse grass and ferns between the cone hills. On a clear day, Mauna Kea can appear above the far rim. Clouds sometimes hide the crater. For a photo, include the shelter’s stone edge or the rim as foreground; it helps show the scale of the cones.

The cone-shaped hills, or puʻu, formed when fluid basalt jetted from fissures, then cooled and welded into cinder and scoria cones. Some rise nearly 1,000 feet. Haleakalā’s summit landscape took about two million years to form through eruptions and rain erosion. Maui now moves west with the Pacific Plate, away from the hotspot beneath Hawaiʻi Island, so erosion has an increasingly large role in shaping it.

The first rest house here was built in 1894 by architect Charles W. Dickey and named Craigielea. The Maui Chamber of Commerce replaced it in 1914 as more visitors arrived and vandalism became a problem. The current shelter was rebuilt in 1957 in the Mission 66 style used for simple park structures as visitation grew.

The marked Silversword Area is on the ocean-facing side of the parking area. The high slopes are also nesting habitat for the Hawaiian petrel, or ʻuaʻu, which lays one egg a year. Stay on designated paths around the silverswords and nesting habitat.