I learned a very valuable lesson when hiking this trail: never hike with out a map. I parked at the hunter check in station on Waipoli road which is right about Kula. I walked in on a dirt road about 1/2 a mile. Then I got to a loop trail. I took the loop trail until the turn off for the Upper Waiakoa Trail which is a switchback trail that traverses up a huge lava field. It starts at about 6400 feet elevation, ends about about 8000 and the clouds were literally right on me. During parts of the hike, I could only see about 10 or 20 feet in front of me but then other times the clouds blew over and i could see the sun blow thru.

I covered the Upper Waiakoa Trail from about 12:10 to around 3:30. Then I got to the road, instead of taking the road, i crossed the street and took another trail called the Waiohuli Trail, thinking it would hook back up with the road. I went on that trail for about 1 1/2 miles, then it hit another trail called the Boundary Trail so I took that for about another 1 1/2 miles. Then I started to get nervous. I didn't know if this boundary trail would hook back up with the road. Instead of risking it, I backtracked the 2 or 3 miles I hiked. It was kind of steep and I was getting very soar and exhausted. Then, I actually went about 1 mile on the road before i flagged down a car who told me I was going the wrong on the road. So it was another 3 or 4 miles back down the road to my car. I ened up getting to the car around 6:45pm. I wouldn't have had this difficulty if i would've brought a map

Here's the state web site: http://www.hawaiitrails.org/trail.asp?TrailID=MA+11+022

For this trail, I jumped over the railing at the top of the Iao Valley Monument and took the trail up into the valley. It had plenty of little subtrails. It mostly traversed along the valley but ended up going up a nice steep hill to a good look out of the whole valley. Total hike was bout 2 1/2 miles and it was midday and HOT.

This trail is over on the west maui mountains. It took me about about 2 1/2 hours round trip, it's an up-and-back ridge trail. It was hot and exposed and had some nice steep parts but nothing too crazy. It's a very well maintained trail. Some people I met on the trail said it was maintained by the boy scouts. The lookouts all the way up were pretty amazing. Those west maui mountains are huge.