Rippling water
Wai is fresh water and ʻaleʻale is rippling or overflowing. The name describes the summit bog, where water stands and moves across saturated ground.
At 5,148 feet it is not quite the highest point on Kauaʻi — Kawaikini is — but it is the one that catches the weather.
Four hundred and fifty inches
The summit averages somewhere around 450 inches of rain a year, and in some years has recorded far more. It is a near-perfect rain trap: a steep wall facing directly into the trade winds with nothing upwind for two thousand miles.
The water it sheds feeds the Wailua River and cuts Waimea Canyon. The cliff face streaked with waterfalls that helicopter tours circle is called the Weeping Wall.
A heiau on top
A small heiau stood at the summit, reached by a trail up the sheer face. That anyone made that climb regularly, in that weather, says something about how the place was regarded.