Mauka · the rift
Mauna Loa's southwest rift zone meets the trail.
From Manukā the rift line of Mauna Loa runs down to the coast. The 1868 and 1950 eruptions both followed this rift; the flows are still visible as bands of younger, blacker basalt against the older surrounding terrain.
Mid · kīpuka
Forest islands surrounded by lava.
A kīpuka is a patch of older land — and older forest — that a lava flow went around rather than through. Manukā preserves several large kīpuka with intact native dryland forest: ʻōhiʻa, koa, and rarer endemics that have nearly vanished elsewhere on the leeward coast.
Open this section in the map (lava layer on) →Coast · wayside
Manukā State Wayside.
The state wayside at Manukā is one of the few publicly accessible trailheads on this stretch of coast. It's also a useful demarcation: north of Manukā is Kona; south is Kaʻū, the most volcanically active district on the island.
Reef · sparse
The Kaʻū coast doesn't reef.
South of Manukā the coast is lava cliff, not coral shelf. The bottom drops too fast for shallow-reef formation. Marine life here is offshore — open-ocean species, deep-water cetaceans, occasionally the green flash at sunset.
Ocean · the cliffs
The cliffs of Kaʻū.
From here the trail follows the most exposed coast on the island. Wind comes straight off the southern Pacific. The waves are big, the shoreline unforgiving, the beaches few — and the views uninterrupted.