The Kaanapali Beach Walk end to end.

What the beach walk is, and where it runs

It is a paved oceanfront promenade that links the Kaanapali resorts, Whalers Village, Puʻu Kekaʻa (Black Rock) and the county beach parks at either end. Not a trail in the boots-and-water-bottle sense — a sidewalk on the edge of the sand, very well signposted past all the beachfront hotels, and public for its entire length.

That last part matters more than it sounds. You will walk past pools, cabanas, towel huts and people whose room rate has three zeroes in it, and none of that changes your right to be there. The sand seaward of the shoreline is a public beach transit corridor under Hawaii law, and the walk itself is signed as public access. Nobody is going to ask you for a room key.

What you get for the effort: the whole beach in one continuous line, the calmest swimming water in the middle, the snorkel entry at the north end, the sunset ceremony at Black Rock, and — from November through April — humpbacks in the ʻAuʻau Channel visible from the path without paying anyone for a boat seat.

How long is the Kaanapali Beach Walk, really?

Here is the honest state of the internet on this question: nobody agrees, and most of the sites quoting a number are quoting each other.

All of those can be simultaneously defensible, because they are not measuring the same thing. It is the same problem that makes the beach itself variously one mile, 1.5 miles or three miles long depending on whether you count Hanakaoʻo Beach Park at the south end and North Beach on the far side of Black Rock. A walk that starts at a different hotel ends up a different length.

So we are not going to add a fifth guess to the pile. We are GPS-measuring this route end to end and will publish a mapped figure with named endpoints — start point, finish point, and the segment lengths in between — so you can pick the version of the walk you actually want rather than budget for somebody else’s.

Figures above are quoted as published by each source, July 2026. No two of them define their endpoints the same way, and none of them name the endpoints they used. Our measurement will be taken on foot with a GPS track and published with the endpoints stated. If you have walked it with a watch and have a track of your own, we would genuinely like to see it.

What you pass, south to north

Walking north puts the afternoon sun behind you and Black Rock ahead of you, which is the better order. Here is the sequence.

1. 01

   Hanakaoʻo Beach Park (Canoe Beach)

   The south trailhead, and the sensible place to start. Free county lot off Honoapiʻilani Highway near mile marker 23.4, with restrooms, showers, picnic tables and barbecues — plus the only lifeguard tower on Kaanapali, staffed 8:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Outrigger canoe clubs launch here in the early morning. Give them the water and the ramp.

2. 02

   Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa

   The first resort you reach walking north, and the reason the south end of this route currently comes with an asterisk. It holds 74 public beach-access stalls, the biggest public block on the beach. It is also where the March 2026 storm did its damage.

3. 03

   Kaanapali Alii

   Condominium villages rather than a hotel tower, with 11 public stalls attached to a 1979 development permit. The shoreline in front of this stretch is the narrowest on the beach.

4. 04

   Marriott's Maui Ocean Club

   Mid-beach. A second public access comes down to the path here off Nohea Kai Drive, squeezed between the Alii and the Marriott — handy if you are aiming for the middle of the beach rather than either end.

5. 05

   Whalers Village

   The one place on the route where the walk stops being a walk and becomes lunch. Open-air, right on the sand, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Hula Grill and Leilani’s On The Beach sit directly on the path; Monkeypod Kitchen by Merriman, ABC Stores and the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Discovery Center are a few steps in. The garage runs $8 an hour with a $50 daily cap, and 21 of its stalls are designated public beach access.

6. 06

   Westin Maui Resort & Spa

   Thirty public stalls and a long frontage. Walk out past the pools and the path picks up again on the seaward side.

7. 07

   The Puʻu Kekaʻa historical marker

   Standing on the beachwalk just north of the Kāʻanapali Beach Public Access Trail, at 2525 Kaanapali Parkway. Read it. It tells you that Puʻu Kekaʻa means “the rolling hill,” that it is revered as ka leina a ka ʻuhane — the place where a soul leaps into eternity — and that Chief Kahekili, who ruled Maui around 1766 to 1793, gained his warriors’ respect by leaping from it when most feared the spirits there. Ninety seconds of reading changes what you are looking at for the rest of the walk.

8. 08

   Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa

   Twenty public stalls and the closest parking to the north end of the main beach. The Sheraton has run the sunset lele kawa ceremony at the rock since it opened in 1963.

9. 09

   Puʻu Kekaʻa (Black Rock)

   The lava promontory that splits Kaanapali in two, and the natural halfway mark of the whole route. The path climbs and curls around it. This is where most people stop, take the photo and turn back — which is exactly why the far side stays quiet.

10. 10

    North Beach and Kahekili Beach Park

    Beyond the rock the crowd thins out fast. The north stretch runs to Kahekili Beach Park — free county lot off Kai Ala Drive, reached from Hwy 30 near mile marker 25.1, with restrooms, showers, a covered pavilion and barbecues. No lifeguard. The reef here comes right to shore.

Walk it in reverse and everything above still applies, with one practical difference: starting at Kahekili and heading south means you hit the erosion work at the far end of a long walk rather than the near end of a short one.

The 2026 detour at the south end

This is the part no other guide has updated, and it is the part that will change your afternoon.

Is the beach walk wheelchair and stroller accessible?

We are not answering this one from a desk, and we would ask you to be suspicious of any site that does.

Here is what is genuinely known. The surface is paved, which is a promising start and rules out the usual sand-and-gravel problem. But paved is not the same as accessible. There are steps and grade changes at several of the resort transitions, where the path steps up out of one property and down into the next. There is an active erosion detour at the south end right now that routes foot traffic inland. And a December 2022 visitor review reported that the walkway in front of the Kaanapali Alii no longer existed, with “massive erosion” forcing “a wide detour up to the street.”

Sources: on-the-ground observation of the paved surface and signposting; a December 2022 visitor review describing the loss of the walkway in front of the Kaanapali Alii; and the county and state record of the March 2026 storm damage and the paused barrier work. We have found no published accessibility survey of this route from any source, official or otherwise. Ours will be the first.

The best time of day to walk it

Two windows, and they are different walks.

Midday is the one to skip. There is almost no shade on the route, the pavement holds heat, and the afternoon wind picks up sand along the open stretches.

Where to join the walk, depending on where you parked

And if the south end sounds like more construction than holiday, the answer is to walk the other half: park at Kahekili Beach Park, walk south to Puʻu Kekaʻa, and turn around. Wide sand, no work zone, and the best beginner reef on this coast waiting at the car when you get back. The main Kaanapali Beach guide has the rest of it — swimming, safety and where the crowds are not.