Hiking the National Park in American Samoa

Rain Forest Hike on Tutuila. This is the new National Park Service trail. Hikers have a couple of options. Start at the bottom trail in the village of Vatia

Start at the upper trail near the overlook sight above Vatia

Start at the Pago trail head.

Hikers can ascend and return on the same trail or go completely cross island, which is the hardest route.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zN1G__bL5g

Seashore to cloud rain forest back to seashore in five hours of moderate hiking. No place else in the world. Unbelievable.

From pago John

It's a beautiful hike. I'm puzzled why you are calling it new. I did it in 2007 from Pago to Vatia.

You must be in great shape since you consider the walk up from Vatia moderate hiking. I was so thankful that I was going down to Vatia. I seem to recall about 30 of the "ladders". And it was far longer from the top to Vatia, then from Pago to the top.

National Park has built a new trail from Vatia. It opened about a month ago. The new trail begins about at about 300 feet in altitude which makes it a lot easier than starting at sea level. The easiest hike is to take the new trail to the ridge top where you can see the Pago harbor side and return back along the same trial.

That's the trail documented on the video.

You can get to the new trail head from the market on the Vatia bus for 2 bucks. There's a video on my YouTube chanel which documents the bus ride also.

From Pago

JW