Napau Crater Trail

The Napau Crater Trail traverses the most volcanically active corridor in Kilauea's East Rift Zone, crossing 14 miles of lava fields laid down between 1969 and 2018 to reach the forested rim of Napau Crater — a pit crater that has erupted multiple times in living memory and remains a restricted zone requiring a day-use permit. The route departs from Mauna Ulu, the shield-building vent that erupted continuously from 1969 to 1974 and added more than 100 million cubic yards of lava to the coastline. The trail crosses broad pahoehoe lava plains — smooth, ropy sheets of cooled lava in chocolate, silver, and iridescent black — as well as fields of jagged a'a that tear boot soles within a season. The Pu'u Huluhulu tree island, a kipuka (forest remnant surrounded by lava), shelters native ohia and tree ferns that provide the only shade on the route. Makaopuhi Crater, a two-mile-wide double pit crater, offers a dizzying overlook before the final approach to Napau. The permit requirement (free, issued same-day at the visitor center, limited to 25 hikers per day) is designed to protect both the fragile ecosystem and visitors from sudden volcanic activity. In 2018, lava from the lower East Rift Zone eruption in Leilani Estates drained the lava lake system that fed this corridor; the geology here now documents that once-in-a-generation event.