Maunawili Falls Trail

This guide to Maunawili Falls Trail in Honolulu opens with an ordinary swimming-hole jump that went wrong, and traces how so many similar falls forced Honolulu firefighters into repeat rescues until the state shut the main trailhead in 2021. It reaches back centuries earlier, to the taro farmers who worked these wet slopes and the stone terraces still hidden in the undergrowth. Watch your footing near the pool's edge rather than the ledge above it.