Haleakala National Park Sunrise Overview
In October my wife and I took a vacation to Maui. I had been to Maui once before, 25 years ago for my parents 25th wedding anniversary! I was pretty young then, and only had a few limited vivid memories. When I think back to that trip with my family 25 years ago I remember snorkeling, my parents renewing their vows, the Road to Hana, and freezing on top of Mt Haleakala.
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Mt Haleakala was probably the first time in my life that I was above 10k feet in elevation. Little did I know back then as a small child that I would love going to altitude and climbing big mountains! Despite being freezing cold on a tropical island, which as a little kid I had strong feelings that should not be possible. I forever remembered that sunrise. Now married, I was excited to experience that once (twice) in a lifetime sunrise with my wife!
Haleakala National Park Sunrise Permits
25 Years ago permits were not needed to visit Mt Haleakala National Park for sunrise. With the invention of the internet, social media and bloggers like myself this has become a pretty well known event to attend and permits are now required to visit for sunrise.
Since requirements at National Parks are always changing, I recommend visiting the official Haleakala National Park Website for the most up to date information.
When my wife and I visited (October 2024) permits were required for Sunrise as outlined by the recreation.gov website where you will book your permits:
A reservation is required for each vehicle entering the park from 3:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. Beginning April 7, 2021 you may book a reservation up to 60 days in advance and 2 days in advance of the start date.
If you are like us and do not have tickets two days beforehand then you can attempt to snag a ticket two days before the date. We definitely were not organized enough to try to book tickets 60 days before, but that kind of worked out. It's a risk to try to book them two days before but it's also a different risk booking them 60 days out. Booking 60 days out you have no idea what the weather will be like, at least two days out you can have a better idea. The day we originally planned to go looked really bad weather wise so we waited a couple days and pushed it to a later date on our vacation for a more favorable weather window.
At the time of writing this reservations cost $1 per vehicle for the sunrise permits. This is not the only cost though, you still need to pay to enter the National Park as well.
If you are not able to snag a permit but are willing to shell out a lot more money there are tours that you can join as well. The tours we saw in October looked to be about $200 per person, which is quite a bit more expensive when compared to the $1 permit fee.
Haleakala Sunrise Reservation Tips
Tickets are released at 7am HST time. I know everyone usually wants to sleep in on vacation but if you are trying to book tickets 2 days before for the Haleakala sunrise then make sure you set an alarm beforehand. I set mine for 6:30am. I wanted time to wake up, log in and ready to hit refresh with my credit card in my hand.
Once up at 6am I was ready! I felt sure I would get tickets since we were here in October after the summer rush and before the winter rush. I logged in and was ready right at 7am when tickets were released.... and bam they were instantly all sold out.... I was frustrated and left to go to the bathroom. While pondering my Haleakala reservation fate on the porcelain throne, I heard my wife in the hotel room yelling for me to come out quickly! I quickly wrapped up and came running out, she was able to secure 1 reservation and we booked right away!
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So what happened here, why were they sold out then suddenly not? This is pure speculation on my part, but while I was reserving our ticket I saw we had 15 minutes to check out once we found a free ticket. What I think is happening is families are having multiple people log in on different devices to "maximize" their chances. As a result a family may have multiple people who were able to snag a reservation right at 7am HST. Since you only need one reservation per vehicle, once they book their 1 ticket they then release what other ones they may have been "holding".
Moral of the story here is if you try to book right at 7am and strike out, don't storm off to the bathroom. Calmly wait and there may be more "release" 15 minutes after. Because my wife was persistent and didn't give up we were able to snag our ticket on our preferred day!
Summary of Haleakala Sunrise Reservation Tips:
- Wake up at least 30 minutes before tickets are released.
- Log into recreation.gov early. You do not want to waste logging in at 7am HST. While you are logging in people will probably already be booking their reservations.
- Have your credit card in your hand ready to go.
- If reservations sell out immediately, don't give up, especially at the 15 minute mark.
Haleakala Sunrise - The Drive
My wife and I were staying at the Sheraton in Kanapali which proved to be one of the longer drives to summit Haleakala. Additionally I wanted to get there with plenty of time before sunrise since I enjoy astrophotography. We left the Sheraton at around 1:30am to catch the sunrise.
Luckily one of the awesome ukulele players at our hotel a few nights earlier mentioned Maoli, an amazing artist who does a bunch of Reggae covers of country music. I instantly fell in love with his music and we had a great playlist to listen to for our drive! Despite the great music we did switch to the Shaka Audio Tours app when we got closer. If you are not familiar, the Shaka Audio tours is an app you download on your phone and it's like having a private tour guide in your car with you. It uses your phone's GPS to time the tour perfectly pointing out sights along the way. The tour up Haleakala also includes some fun history while driving both up and down the mountain. I am not affiliated with this app at all but my wife and I absolutely love it!
Haleakala Visitor Center
There are a number of locations to watch the sunrise from, but it is all first come first serve parking. Get there early if you are particular on where you want to watch the sunrise from. To be honest I didn't research the pros and cons of which spot to watch from in depth. I watched one or two quick YouTube videos and heard the Visitors Center was a great spot so we navigated there for our sunrise experience.
The Visitors center is just below the Haleakala Summit, but ended up being a fantastic viewing experience. The image I shared at the start of the article was taken at this spot.
When we first arrived it was pitch black but magical looking up into the millions of stars in the sky. We packed our mountaineering puffy coats and a few layers to stay warm. It's pretty chilly and you will be standing around a bit waiting for sunset, so it's pretty chilly. I recommend you also pack a headlamp as well because the walk to the overlook can be a bit un-even. Please be respectful with your headlamp or flashlight and respect your fellow visitors at the park enjoying the designated dark sky.
At this time I was unfortunately disappointed by the tour groups arriving. When the tours came up a handful of the tour guides were using massive flashlights to point locations out in the "Crater" and the sky, and were thus polluting and ruining the natural dark skies. I honestly don't know if it's illegal or not to shine bright lights in a designated dark sky like that, but as a snobby photographer I was a bit disappointed. They eventually stopped and I was able to get back to some photography.
Since we were there early we got prime front row viewing of the sunrise right here at the green rectangle:
As the sunrise rose, I had my camera taking pictures and eventually made my first night to day time lapse from it. While the camera snapped away it was amazing to experience the sunrise in the chilly air with my wife by my side.
As the stars slowly disappeared a thin red strip across the horizon began to appear slowly revealing a sea of clouds. As the stars departed the sea of clouds became more visible and flowed effortlessly over the terrain in front of us like a slow moving ocean. The black abyss in front of us revealed all its terrain features and I felt like we were transported from space to a moon-like planet below. This was one of the best natural shows of nature I have ever seen!
Pā Ka'oao Trail
After watching the sunrise, we decided to hike the short distance up Pā Ka'oao Trail. Pā Ka'oao Trail is a very short .2 mile hike up from the visitors center to a slightly higher overlook from where we watched the sunrise from. The short hike has only a 100ft of elevation gain. The elevation gain may not seem like a lot but take it slow you are at 10k feet of elevation and if you drove up like us, there wasn't much time for your body to acclimate.
From this vantage point you get another great view of the Haleakala Crater:
Haleakala Summit
After our short hike we took the short drive to Haleakala Summit before heading back down to sea level and relaxing at the beach. It worked out that we viewed the Sunrise from the Visitors Center because it looked like the summit structure had some maintenance going on and had some sections closed off.
While up at the summit you can see the awesome Haleakala Observatories as well!
