Kuili - January 13 2024
A small cinder cone on the way to the Kona airport from the north, only a few minutes of a hike, but some nice views if you're nearby (or just want the peak for the sake of the peak)
Big Island, Hawaii, USA
104m
After going after some bigger peaks earlier on my trip, me and my dad made a trip along the north side of the Big Island, and on our way back, I managed to convince him to stop for one last peak on the way to the airport. We'd recently grabbed lunch nearby, and had a few minutes of buffer before our flight to Maui, so I roped him into this little cinder cone off of the highway north of Kona.
We pulled off of the highway onto the Kua Bay Access Road, and drove down most of the way to the water, until we found a small pull-out of cars, and a trail that seemed to head up the mountain. We quickly got ourselves parked and started heading up, with not too much time to waste to return our car to the rental place and get checked-in for our flight.
I stuck with my dad for a minute or two before I decided it'd be fun to get my heart rate up and hike a bit faster, so I split off and headed for the second, lower summit, figuring that would allow him to meet me at the true summit at roughly the same time. I actually started jogging once I got off of the rougher lower trail and onto the more even dirt road that formed the upper half. Since this is so small/short, this only took 4 minutes of my time, and I got to the true summit in just six minutes overall. My dad joined shortly thereafter, we took some pics, and headed down, nice and sweaty for our flight in a couple hours 🤣. Not much else to say, it's a very simple, fast walk up. If you like easy views, it's nice, if you like bagging peaks for the sake of bagging peaks, it's nice, otherwise it's just a random hill.
GPX Track + Map
