Postcard from Maui: a bucket-list trip for cyclists who like an uphill struggle

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":10.24,"text":"The volcano that dominates Maui tends not to be a very active experience for the hundreds of tourists who scale it every day. They come by car, driving up from the north coast until the road ends at the edge of Haleakalā’s otherworldly crater. Even the summit has its own car park; peak baggers need only hike five minutes to a little lookout hut at 3,055 metres above sea level. There are often traffic jams at dawn and dusk, when the views across the Pacific archipelago are most bewitching."}],[{"start":39.9,"text":"Not long after sunrise on a muggy September day in Pāʻia, a charming former sugar plantation town not far from Maui’s main airport, I’m preparing to scale Haleakalā (“house of the sun”) the hard way. With pockets full of energy bars and little idea how long I’ll be, I clip into a borrowed bicycle and head south."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":59.24,"text":"As I rise past coffee fields and mandarin groves, a profile of the climb automatically appears on my bike computer: a perfect ramp, 55km long, rising from pretty much sea level to more than 3,000 metres. The widely used app Strava bills it as “the world’s longest paved climb”, though in fact there are bigger ascents in Colombia, Ecuador and Taiwan (an element of ambiguity clouds the rankings because some routes could be discounted for including short sections of downhill). Either way, Haleakalā is about double the Tour de France’s biggest climb and one of only a handful of roads anywhere with such tantalising stats. I’m soon spinning in my lowest gear as sweat overcomes my eyebrows."}],[{"start":100.86,"text":"I’ve come to Maui for a wedding and had been vaguely aware that the island’s skyscraping roads had a growing reputation among masochistic cyclists. When I learnt the wedding was in Pāʻia, and so at the foot of the route up Haleakalā, riding it felt like an obligation."}],[{"start":115.66,"text":"The bike belongs to Donnie Arnoult, a former pro racer who moved here from Las Vegas in 1999. There were a few triathletes kicking around among the windsurfers and big-wave riders who were settling on the island then, but no real cycling scene. Arnoult, who’s 61, started offering tours and bike rentals in 2001."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":135.06,"text":"The American began to put Maui on the cyclists’ map, particularly among gravity-defying geeks like me who target famous climbs while on holiday. He normally rides with clients (he reckons he’s been up Haleakalā more than 500 times) but has other engagements today. “I’m usually there trying to distract people from what’s happening to them,” he tells me before my ride."}],[{"start":155.38,"text":"Feeling strong after a busy summer on my own bike, I soon forget Arnoult’s advice to start slow. I breeze through the upcountry cowboy town of Makawao, where there’s a busy farmers’ market on Saturdays, reaching my first water stop at the Sandalwoods Café and Inn in Kula after 90 minutes."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":172.42,"text":"But the road then gets steeper as the hairpins start. The humidity and relentless gradient are beginning to show in the sweat-salt now encrusting my Lycra shirt. Soon acacias and jacarandas give way to barren shrub land and my first sight of the glinting summit observatories. (The road was finished in 1935 with tourism in mind: the telescopes arrived in the 1950s.)"}],[{"start":194.14,"text":"No more than two or three cyclists ride from Pāʻia to the summit on the average day, though in August up to 200 can compete in Cycle to the Sun, an annual race Arnoult has staged since 2008. The only other cyclists I encounter have paid to be driven up to enjoy part of the descent on mountain bikes."}],[{"start":211.86,"text":"After more than three hours of climbing, I reach the entrance to the national park that covers the volcano’s upper slopes and refill my bottles again. There are now just under 1,000 vertical metres to go — roughly an Alpe d’Huez, the Tour de France’s most famous ascent. Yet the air is already thinner than it is at the top of the French climb, and the lava landscape begins to feel forbiddingly Martian."}],[{"start":233.46,"text":"I stop twice on the final hairpins to gather my thoughts in the sun until, after almost four and a half hours of pedalling, I reach the summit hut. Gasping for air, I answer repeated questions from incredulous motorborne tourists about how I got here."}],[{"start":250.46,"text":"According to Polynesian legend, the demigod Maui lassoed the sun above Haleakalā to make the days longer so that his mother Hina had more time to dry her bark-cloth laundry. If proximity to the stars gave rise to such a myth, I can see why as I gaze down on a sea of clouds and the seemingly ceaseless ocean far beyond them. I have enjoyed views from higher peaks, but as I prepare for the thrilling descent back to Pāʻia and a date with a poke bowl, I don’t remember ever feeling so close to the heavens."}],[{"start":282.18,"text":"Simon Usborne’s bike was loaned by Maui Cyclery (gocyclingmaui.com). For more on visiting the island see gohawaii.com"}],[{"start":291.12,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":306.5,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1793443903_5318.mp3"}