The Nature Conservancy in Hawaii - Kamakou Preserve

Save Our Native Forests

Support our efforts to protect Hawaii's remaining native forests that sustain life for people, as well as plants and animals that depend on these natural habitats to survive.

Take a Hike

The Conservancy offers a monthly guided hike into Kamakou Preserve. For more information, call the Moloka'i field office at (808) 553-5236 or email hike_molokai@tnc.org.

Endangered Beauty

If you're on Moloka'i, check out the "Remains of a Rainbow," a Conservancy-sponsored exhibit of stunning photographic portraits of endangered flora and fauna of Hawai'i taken by world-renowned nature photographers Susan Middleton and David Liitschwager.

By Grady Timmons

The best hike you've never heard of is the Pēpē‘ōpae boardwalk trail at Kamakou, a Nature Conservancy preserve. Located high in the mountains of east Moloka‘i, Kamakou is a primeval Hawaiian rain forest offering a truly magnificent walk into an ancient time. More than 250 species of native Hawaiian plants and trees are woven together here in a rich biological tapestry, providing habitat for native songbirds, happy-face spiders and colorful banded tree snails.

I made my first visit to Kamakou about a decade ago and have been back many times since. When asked by friends to describe it, I often say it’s Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs. From its tall overhanging canopy to its moss-covered forest floor, it looks like something only ethereal hands could have designed.

Kamakou is an easy hike — barely three miles roundtrip — but it is not an easy place to reach. Visitors shouldn’t attempt it without a four-wheel drive and an experienced, knowledgeable guide.

The dirt road that leads to the preserve wends its way through diverse terrain. Turning into the uplands, you travel first through a parched landscape of kiawe scrub and alien grasses where axis deer are sometimes seen. About three miles up, the landscape suddenly changes and you find yourself in the Moloka‘i Forest Reserve, amid tall stands of introduced ironwood, eucalyptus and pines.

Going higher still, you pass the lua moku ‘iliahi, or sandalwood measuring pit. This is a site worth stopping for. In the early 1800s, before it was harvested to near extinction, native Hawaiian sandalwood was exported to China for its fragrant aroma. On Moloka‘i, the felled sandalwood was piled into the pit, which was dug in the shape of a ship’s hull. When the pit was full, the wood was hauled down the mountain to waiting vessels bound for the Orient.

Pēpē'ōpae Bog.

Not until you reach the Waikolu Overlook a little further up do you get a taste of what lies ahead. Waikolu is one of the remote valleys along Molokai’s spectacular windward coast, normally only accessible by boat or helicopter. From the overlook, you can peer down into the valley. Waterfalls plunge from its green canyon walls, which are narrow and steep and tunnel down to the sea.

Beyond Waikolu, it is 2.2 miles to the Pēpē‘ōpae trailhead. The road is deeply rutted and treacherous when wet, and by the time you arrive the forest has changed again. You are in rain forest country now, at an elevation of some 3,500 feet, and all around grows ‘ōhi‘a lehua, the signature tree of the Hawaiian forest.

A narrow boardwalk built to protect the fragile native vegetation takes you through the preserve. Once underway, you hear only the wind and the occasional trill of native honeycreepers darting among the trees. The plant life is astonishing: creeping ground cover, spiraling aerial roots, tubular flowers, and colorful fruits and berries. Ferns grow in profusion, sprouting from the forest floor and from the trunks and limbs of knotted, moss-covered trees. It all blends together harmoniously.

Less than a mile in, the forest ends abruptly and you emerge into a clearing. This is Pēpē‘ōpae Bog, a strange miniature landscape of low-growing sedges and stunted ‘ōhi‘a lehua trees. With peat deposits dating back 10,000 years, Pēpē‘ōpae is one of Hawaii’s oldest bogs. In its accumulated plant material is the record of forests long gone and one of the finest gauges of the Islands’ climatic history. Leave a footprint in this delicate ecosystem, I’m told, and it can last for decades.

Pelekunu overlook

Once through the bog, you reenter the forest and continue on for another half mile before arriving at the spectacular overlook of Pelekunu Valley, another Nature Conservancy preserve, flanked by some of the world’s tallest sea cliffs. The overlook is the climax of the hike, but when there is heavy cloud cover its view can be obscured.

That happened one day while I was visiting the preserve with friends. Disappointed, we sat and ate lunch on a grassy ledge that marks the trail’s end. Just as we were getting up to leave, however, the clouds parted and we were able to glimpse the long sweep of the valley below, extending down some 3,700 feet to the sea.

As we made our way back along the boardwalk that day, I thought about how special places like Kamakou are. Most visitors to Hawai‘i never see its native forests, which are rare and endangered and survive only at higher elevations.

Susan Middleton, a nationally renowned wildlife photographer and the co-author of four National Geographic books, once told me that the Islands’ native forests are some of the most beautiful and inspirational places she has ever seen. (See sidebar, Endangered Beauty.)

The ancient Hawaiians referred to these upland forests as wao akua — the realm of the gods. Walking along the Kamakou boardwalk, it is easy to see why.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): © Grady Timmons/TNC (boardwalk at Kamakou Preserve); © Peter Menzel (TNC staff leading hikers in Kamakou Preserve); © Alan Watson (native hapu'u fern); © David Muench (Pēpē'ōpae bog, Kamakou).