Big Island Helicopter Waterfalls

Windward Mauna Kea and Kohala Mountains, Hawaii, USA

About Big Island Helicopter Waterfalls

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Waterfall Safety and Common Sense

While I’ve featured several Big Island Waterfalls on this website, there are still countless more.

The vast majority of these waterfalls are concentrated on the windward sides of both the Kohala Mountains as well as Mauna Kea.

Most of these are either inaccessible or private.

Big_Island_Heli_Paradise_046_jx_02222008 - A pair of Big Island Waterfalls spilling right into the ocean between Waipi'o Valley and Waimanu Valley
A pair of Big Island Waterfalls spilling right into the ocean between Waipi’o Valley and Waimanu Valley

Thus, I created this page to showcase the waterfalls seen on our lone successful helicopter tour.

On that tour, we managed to fly over the volcanoes towards the southeast part of the Big Island, then we swung northwards along the Hamakua Coast.

This exposed us to many waterfalls we were familiar with on our self-tours, but we also spotted many more waterfalls that we couldn’t have accessed.

We also flew by the mouth of the Waipi’o Valley and into the more remote Waimanu Valley, which were among the secluded valleys of the Kohala Mountains.

Kapoloa Falls

The original intent of doing this helicopter tour was to seek out the Kapoloa Falls.

This was the same waterfall that Samantha Brown featured on her show, which Julie and I chanced upon while channel surfing one day.

Unfortunately, the Kona Earthquake of October 2006 caused extensive damage to the Kohala Ditch Trail deep into Pololu Valley.

That essentially rendered this waterfall inaccessible to the general public.

Guided tours used to be the only way to properly visit the waterfall on foot since the trail passed through private land.

Unfortunately, on our particular 2008 chopper tour, we never got a chance to witness the Kapoloa Falls.

Even despite verbal agreement that the pilot would fly into the back of Pololu Valley to see this falls, he ended up forgetting about it and flew over some World War II wreckage instead.

Maps and Routing Content are for annual subscribers. See Membership Options.
Content is for subscribers. See Membership Options.
Tagged with: windward, mauna kea, kohala, big island, hawaii, waterfalls, kapoloa falls, waimanu valley, waipio valley, helicopter



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Johnny Cheng

About Johnny Cheng

Johnny Cheng is the founder of the World of Waterfalls and author of the award-winning A Guide to New Zealand Waterfalls. Over the last 2 decades, he has visited thousands of waterfalls in over 40 countries around the world and nearly 40 states in the USA.
Read More About Johnny | A Guide to New Zealand Waterfalls.