The Diamond Head Crater Trail is one of the most popular hikes for visitors in Oahu. This post details how to make reservations for the hike, parking information, difficulty, and what to expect on this trail.
Getting to Diamond Head Crater Trail
The Diamond Head Crater Trailhead is very close to Waikiki Bay. By car, it’s about 13 minutes from the Royal Hawaiian Center, 12 minutes from the International Marketplace, and 12 minutes from the Honolulu Zoo. If you don’t have access to a car, it’s also possible to arrive by Uber and you can make advance reservations for entering the park that don’t involve parking.
Cost, Timing, and Parking
This hike is very popular among visitors so currently, getting into Diamond Head Crater Trail requires an advance reservation for non-residents (no reservations required for residents) through the Hawaii state parks reservation system. When we visited in June, the cost was $5 per person and $10 per vehicle to if you want to park at the trail. I read online that you need to make reservations 3 days in advance to get but you can actually make reservations for any open time slot up to 30 days in advance. For example, I checked on a Sunday night and saw openings in the 4 pm to 6 pm slot for Monday and several afternoon openings for Tuesday. Audio tours are also available for purchase at the visitor center for about $8 currently.
Time slots open at 6 am and end at 6 pm in 2 hour increments. Visitors have to enter within 30 minutes of the start of their time slot and exit by the end of their two-hour time slot. For example, if you pick a 6 am time slot, you need to enter the park by 6:30 am and exit the park by 8 am. The entire trail is about 1.6 miles round trip so a 1.5 to 2 hour time limit is quite feasible.
Since you make your reservations online before you get to the park, you don’t need to make payments at the entrance gate. At the gate, they’ll check the QR code you get with your online reservation and then hand you brochures for the park.
When we arrived for our 4 pm time slow, there were a lot of parking spaces available. This is likely due to the current timed entry system and also possibly because it was the last time slot of the day.
What to expect on the hike
The hike at Diamond Head Crater Trail is typically described as a moderately difficult hike. The trail itself is extremeley well maintained with paved roads almost the entire way.
Although the beginning of the trail (approximately the first 0.2 miles) is smooth, flat, and paved with concrete, the ascent starts pretty quickly and becomes substantially steeper and rockier. Although we saw a number of younger school-aged children on the trail, a stroller is not really feasible since much of the path is quite rocky.
The trail is very steep at the top and most of the paved roads are not smooth but somewhat rocky (see above left image). The most steep portions have stairs, however, and there are hand rails nearly everywhere along the acending and descending parts of the trail.
As you can see, much of the trail is somewhat narrow since there’s basically enough space for one person going up and one person going down. We took a 4 pm to 6 pm slot and there were a number of people desceding while we were ascending but very few people ascending while we were descending. During busier hours, visitors are probably ascending and descending in single file. There are several look out areas so visitors can step out of the line to take pictures and admire the views.
Near the top of the trail, there is also a very dark and narrow tunnel that you need to go through. The trail was not very busy when we were there but during busier times, it’s possible that some visitors might feel somewhat cramped in the tunnel.
It’s about 0.8 miles to the top and the views from there are stunning. Some parts of the hike are quite steep and the narrowness of the trail makes it less likely that visitors will move at a very leisurely pace or stop very often to take pictures. The steepness and uneveness of the path in many areas also makes the trail inaccessible to strollers. Nonetheless, the views at the top are well worth the relatively short hike!
