Sliding Sands Trail Maui Ceramic Art Tile
— — a long red walk down into the quiet.
Not only on a wall.
“The trail leaves the rim near the Haleakalā Visitor Center at about 9,700 feet and drops down onto the floor of the crater. A wide, quiet, almost lunar place where the Haleakalā silversword grows and grows nowhere else. The surface is loose red and ochre cinder; boots sink a little. Most hikers who go down turn around well before noon, before the cloud layer climbs up the western slope and pours back over the rim. The walk down is easy. The walk back is the part you remember.
Sliding Sands Trail Maui Ceramic Art Tile, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Keonehe'ehe'e, known to most visitors as Sliding Sands Trail, descends from a trailhead near the Haleakalā Visitor Center at 9,740 feet (2,969 m), inside Haleakalā National Park on the island of Maui. The trail drops about 2,500 feet over its first four miles, walking down a slope of loose volcanic cinder onto the floor of Haleakalā's vast erosional depression. The full length runs roughly eleven miles east to Palikū Cabin near the park's eastern boundary. The summit of Haleakalā itself, at Pu'u 'Ula'ula or Red Hill, reaches 10,023 feet (3,055 m), placing the rim among the highest points in the Pacific.
At the trailhead the air is roughly two-thirds as dense as at sea level, and the rim sits above most of the trade-wind cloud layer that builds over Maui through the day. Mornings are clear and cold, often near freezing in winter; by early afternoon clouds typically climb the western slope and pour over the rim. The U.S. Geological Survey classifies Haleakalā as an active volcano, with its most recent eruption between roughly 1480 and 1600 on the southwest rift zone. The Haleakalā silversword (ʻāhinahina), endemic to this volcano, lives about fifty years, flowers once, and dies.
The trail is open to day hikers all year and no permit is required, though Haleakalā National Park charges a vehicle entrance fee at the station below the summit road. The descent is easy; the return climb gains 2,500 feet in thin air with no shade and no reliable water, and the National Park Service recommends turning back well before noon to leave a margin for the cloud ceiling and the climb out. Overnight stays at the three backcountry cabins (Hōlua, Kapalaoa, Palikū) and the two wilderness campgrounds require advance reservation through recreation.gov.