Free, 12 pages, no catch
Kaanapali Beach: The Field Guide.
Twelve pages about one beach — the parking map with the stall counts, the Black Rock snorkel plan, the current diagram and the safety checklist. It downloads instantly, it costs nothing, and it is the version that still works when you are standing on the sand with one bar of signal.
What is actually in it, page by page
No teaser chapters, no “upgrade for the full version.” This is the whole thing, and here is every page of it before you hand over an email address.
| Page | Section | What's on it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cover | Kaanapali Beach: The Field Guide. 2026 edition, dated, so you know how old the information is. |
| 2 | The beach at a glance | Where it is, how long it really is, what is free, and the lifeguard line other guides get wrong. |
| 3–4 | The parking map | Annotated, with the public stall count for each of the seven resort properties and both free county lots. |
| 5 | Black Rock | Puʻu Kekaʻa: what the name means, why it matters, and where the public access trail comes out. |
| 6 | The snorkel plan | The entry point, the route along the wall, what you will see, and exactly where to turn around. |
| 7 | The current diagram | The north-side current, drawn. A paragraph does not make this obvious. A picture does. |
| 8 | The safety checklist | When not to get in: shore break, swell, jellyfish caution windows, and going in alone. |
| 9 | Timing and seasons | Whale season, swell season, and which hours of the day are worth anything. |
| 10 | Sunscreen | Maui County Ordinance 5306 in plain English — mineral only, and it regulates use, not just sale. |
| 11 | A perfect day | Hour by hour, from parking at eight to the light after the sunset ceremony. |
| 12 | Beyond the beach | Where to go from here, and the Maui businesses we send people to. |
The parking map on pages three and four is the part people write back about. Nobody else publishes the public beach-access stall counts at all — they exist as conditions of permits from the late 1970s and 1980s, and they are not on any resort’s website. The web version of that page is here, if you would rather just read it.
Why a PDF, in 2026
Because of where you are going to need it. Standing on sand, in the sun, with wet hands, one bar of signal and a decision to make about whether to get in the water — that is not a moment for loading a web page. A downloaded file opens instantly, works with no service at all, and does not reflow into an advert halfway down.
And the decisions this guide is built around are decisions you make at the beach, not at home: which lot to try when the first one is full, whether the swell looks wrong today, where to turn around at Black Rock, how long before sunset to walk down for the ceremony. Those are three-seconds-of-looking answers. A PDF on your camera roll is the right shape for them.
It is genuinely free
One email address, an instant download, no double opt-in and no drip sequence you have to escape from. Unsubscribe whenever. We would rather you had the safety checklist than the newsletter.
Built for no signal
Save it to your phone before you leave the room with the wifi. Every page is designed to be read on a screen in daylight, and the parking map and the current diagram are the two that matter most when you are already there.
Every figure in the guide is checked against a primary source — the county, the state, the resort, or the marker on the beach — and where sources genuinely disagree, the guide says so rather than picking the one that reads best. Two things are flagged as unresolved in the current edition, on purpose.
Free field guide
Twelve pages about one beach.
Not an island guide with a Kaanapali chapter — a field guide built for this beach and nothing else. Save it to your phone before you go: it is the version that still works when you are standing on the sand deciding whether to get in.
- The annotated parking map — all 196 public stalls by resort, plus which lots fill first
- The Black Rock snorkel plan: where to enter, where to turn around, and the current diagram
- The "when not to go in" checklist, and a perfect Kaanapali day hour by hour
Who wrote this
Written and photographed on Maui by Shane Perry. Every fee, rule, stall count and hazard on this site is checked against a primary source — the county, the state, the resort, the marker on the beach — before it goes on the page. Where the sources disagree, we say so instead of picking the one that reads best.
Last reviewed · July 2026 · Corrections welcome