Hiking · Oahu, Hawaii, USA · recorded with NomadTracks

Oahu waterfall trail: 5 km of mud, roots and jungle

Hawaiian trails are slip-and-grin affairs: 4.7 km of red mud, banyan roots and dripping jungle, with a waterfall as the prize. Recorded between rain showers on Oahu's windward side.

Distance4.7 km
Elevation gain177 m
ActivityHiking
Duration2 h 17 min

About this data: this track and its photos were personally shared with us as samples by a NomadTracks user. NomadTracks never uploads, collects or shares your tracks or photos — your recordings stay on your devices and in your own cloud.

Route map of Oahu waterfall trail: 5 km of mud, roots and jungle drawn from the recorded GPS points on an OpenStreetMap basemap
The actual recorded GPS track — start marked green, finish orange. Numbered pins mark where the photos below were taken.

Download GPX Coordinates, elevation and relative times — recording dates are normalized out, photos not included.

Elevation profile of the track
Elevation profile over the full distance. Switch the map above to interactive mode, then slide across the chart — a marker follows the route.

The trailhead-map trick, tropical edition

The wooden map board at the trailhead got photographed and georeferenced before setting off — thirty seconds of work, and the hand-drawn trail network became a live map with a blue dot. On junction-rich jungle trails this is worth more than any global map layer.

Mud math

The pace chart is a comedy of friction: confident kilometers on the ridge, then a crawl down the muddy chute to the falls. The numbers don't lie — and they make next time's time budget realistic.

About the place: Oahu, Hawaii, USA

Windward Oahu's valleys funnel trade-wind clouds into daily showers, keeping the waterfall trails lush, muddy and slick year-round. Hawaiian jungle hiking has its own rules: red clay over roots, fast-rising streams after rain, and trailhead boards whose hand-drawn maps are often better than any app's base layer — photograph and georeference them.

Jungle ridgelines of Oahu rolling toward the coast
1 · Jungle ridgelines of Oahu rolling toward the coast
Red dirt clearing on the waterfall trail
2 · Red dirt clearing on the waterfall trail
The trailhead map board, photographed and georeferenced in NomadTracks
3 · The trailhead map board, photographed and georeferenced in NomadTracks
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