, is a series of galvanized-steel ship ladders from valley floor to the top of Puu Keahiakahoe. At an altitude of more than 2,800 feet, the top of the Stairs is some 2,200 feet above the main building of the now decommissioned U.S. Coast Guard OMEGA Station and about 2,300 feet above the bottom step. (Haʻikū is a Hawaiian word meaning Kahili flower and has no connection to the Japanese word for a poetry genre.)
The ladders are 18 inches wide and altogether about 4,000 feet long. The average slope is about 30 degrees, despite its reputation of being “nearly straight up.” Of course there are some sections that are quite steep, but others much less so.
Each section of the ladder contains seven steps, and the sections are numbered consecutively to the top. There are other steps apart from the ladders themselves, however, which complicates the counting. Various counts have been made, but the most widely accepted is 3,922—the number on the Friends of Haʻikū Stairs