Dead and Missing Hikers in Hawaii
HAWAII’S DEADLY SECRET
Hawaii has a deadly secret that the Hawaii Visitors Bureau must do a better job at disclosing:
Hiking and swimming in Hawaii take an alarming toll on life. On average, one visitor a week drowns in Hawaiian waters. But it’s not just death by drowning. While the vast majority of tourists who perish in paradise do so by drowning (90% of all drownings), an appalling number of local residents and visitors also die while hiking.
This blog site focuses almost exclusively on LOST and DEAD hikers in Hawaii. While Hawaii hiking trails are, for the most part, safe, the problem is the allure of going off-trail.
REASONS FOR HAWAII FATALITIES
Both novices and experienced hikers alike have died or gone missing. The most common reasons for hiking fatalities are:
● SLIPPING OFF A TRAIL OR CLIFF: Hawai’i has some of the highest rainfall totals in the world. Many trails are muddy and/or slippery. Other trails can be dry, but crumbly, or have tripping obstacles such as rocks and roots. Ridgeline trails, with sharp drop-offs on either side, leave zero room for error.
● GRABBING A ROPE, AN OVERHEAD TREE ROOT OR VINE, OR A ROCK OUTCROPPING WHICH GIVES WAY: Unlike North American granite, Hawaiian rocks are basalt, i.e., volcanic in origin, and therefore brittle and crumbly. Hikers fall and die when they err in grabbing what appears to be a solid rock outcropping to hoist themselves, or vegetation which turns out to be loosely anchored.
● HIKING ALONE AND NOT STAYING IN PLACE WHEN LOST: Numerous hikers have gone missing, never to be found again. By ignoring two fundamentals – never hike alone and stay put if you get lost – hikers have needlessly lost their lives.
● USING NON-APPROVED TRAILS or GOING OFF A TRAIL: The State of Hawai’i maintains numerous safe hiking trails. O’ahu alone has 43 state-managed trails. The problem is that some hikers either go off the approved trail (then got lost, fall and die) or they hike popular, but non-approved, trails.
The two deadliest trails are KALALAU VALLEY, especially around Mile 7 (Kaua’i):
… and OLOMANA TRAIL (windward O’ahu), where numerous hikers have fallen to their deaths.
To a lesser degree, other fatalities have occurred because of:
● FLASH-FLOODING: This is a significant problem on Kaua’i (the wettest spot in the world), Maui and the Big Island.
● LAVA FIELDS AND STEAM VENTS: Unique to the Big Island (the only Hawaiian island with active volcanoes), a handful of hikers have perished because of asphyxiation from the toxic volcanic gasses or fatal scalding (slipping into a steam vent or falling into a lava pool or lava stream).
● EXPOSURE: A small number of fatalities have occurred on the Big Island – either in the vast lava fields or in the upper reaches of Mauna Kea or Mauna Loa – when a hiker, after several days of being lost, finally expires because of exposure and/or dehydration.
As a public service, this site highlights just some of the hiking victims – where and how they died, their ages, and relevant details.
Not every Hawaii hiking tragedy is recorded here. For every hiking death you read about here, there may be a half-dozen or more incidents where emergency crews had to be dispatched and, thankfully, were able to rescue hikers in distress. In addition, left unreported are the countless other hiking mishaps that never made it into the print or television media because they were drowned out by other news events or because of self-rescue attempts.
To view each island’s hiking fatalities, click on the links below.
Survive Hawaii 