Parking has never been an easy or safe thing at the head of the Kaawaloa Trail where Napoopoo Road meets Highway 11 in Captain Cook.
Parking has never been an easy or safe thing at the head of the Kaawaloa Trail where Napoopoo Road meets Highway 11 in Captain Cook.
Visitors to the trail to the Captain Cook Monument are forced to vie for narrow gravel slots along the road shoulder, time the opening of their car doors as vehicles hurdle past, and often scurry across the road to the trailhead.
Up to 36 cars have been counted crammed into the narrow stretch of Napoopoo Road shoulder, said resident John Koontz.
“I’ve been here when they had an 11-year-old girl stopping traffic while her parents had the car doors open,” said Koontz. “People walk out between cars. It’s scary.”
With county construction work going full steam on the Mamalahoa Bypass, a makai shoulder area that once served as trail parking has been cordoned off with orange fencing, forcing hikers to park further down Napoopoo Road toward Makahiki Lane. How the construction of a new intersection near the trailhead will interface with trail parking and the associated human behavior has raised concerned for some area residents, who say that now is the time to come up with a plan.
Public Works Director Warren Lee said the county is aware of the parking issue, and that the mayor’s office and parks department have discussed the problem. But a solution is not imminent.
“Hopefully in the longer term something can be worked out for parking, but that’s not part of the current project,” Lee said.
“We’ll keep looking for solutions to the problem,” he said.
During construction, hikers should park further down Napoopoo Road away from the work zone, Lee said.
“People should avoid that area during construction because it’s going to be congested enough as it is,” he said.
In a recent letter to Lee, some 14 residents of nearby Makahiki Lane pointed out the hazards of the current situation and called for the county to create a parking area and possibly restrooms and water access as part of the $27.9 million bypass and intersection construction slated for completion in early 2016. Visitors trying to find the trailhead and parking have torn a water line out of one resident’s yard with their vehicle and driven over grass fields, and other hikers have trespassed trying to find shortcuts and water, residents say.
With people frequently driving down Makahiki Lane to try to find a road to the monument, Koontz favors parking improvements, restrooms and more signs that clearly lay out the access situation. Koontz even floats the idea of creating an access point to the trail lower down off the new bypass, offering a way to the monument that is not as steep as Kaawaloa. The nearly 4 mile round trip hike to the monument from Napoopoo has an elevation change of 1,300 feet.
While the area’s Hawaii County Council representative concurs that parking is unsafe and many people tackle the trail not knowing what they’re getting into, she said she needed to confer with Public Works before she offers up potential solutions.
“I saw a car just last month making a U-turn on a blind turn because they’d found a place to park,” said Councilwoman Maile David, whose district includes Captain Cook. “It’s a huge problem that’s been going on for years.”
“There are a lot of rumors going around about what’s going to happen,” David added. “With the bypass being punched through, this is coming to the forefront.”
While she sees a need for access to water and restrooms, those items could also create budget issues, David said.
“Coming up the trail, we’d run into people on the verge of collapsing, because they had brought nothing,” said David, who grew up in the area. “People would just park on the edge of the road and come down.”
Email Bret Yager at byager@westhawaiitoday.com.