Lahaina Pali Hike

A few weekends ago we decided to take Dean on his first hike up the Lahaina Pali trail. This is a VERY steep and exposed trail around past Maalaea that goes up and over the old Pali (Hawaiian for "cliff") on the way to Lahaina. This is an area that is very dry and prone to grass fires. You'll notice in the photos how exposed it is. There was a large wildfire here several years ago in which a few thousand acres burned. Joel and I sat on the beach several nights and would watch the fire just consume what looked like all of West Maui. It was crazy.

Anyway, We knew Dean probably wouldn't make it very far on this hike, but we wanted to check out the beautiful ocean views from the trail and see if we could see any early season whales (this is an awesome trail to be on when the whales are active) - we didn't see any whales. Dean was a little grumpy at first and was more interested in reading the trail signs than in actually hiking. But the promise of more "numbers posts" (the trail has numbered points of interest along the way, although I've never found an official guidebook or looked up online what these numbers actually refer to) was enough bribe to move him along when he'd get too rooted to one spot!! The kid does love his numbers!

Anyway, here are some pics from our hike: