Beware of invisible cows
by HML
When we were planning this vacation, our senior team member asked his doctor if it would be safe for him to go to the summit of Mauna Kea. His doctor’s response? “Life is for living!” And having survived his afternoon lava hike, he was eager to give Mauna Kea a try.
The Saddle Road is the way to get to the mountain – about an hour’s drive from Hilo or about two hours from Kona. For driving up the mountain, a 4-wheel drive is essential: most of the road is paved, but there are some lengthy stretches of gravel, and the entire eight mile drive from the visitor station to the summit is very steep, narrow, and full of switchbacks. The guidebooks strongly recommend spending at least half an hour at the visitor information station, located at 9,200 feet, to adjust to the altitude. A longer stay is recommended if possible; there are several films and short walks around the station to help pass the time. We stayed about 45 minutes, sipping hot chocolate and watching the movies, until the sunset tour vans began to arrive.
On the drive up, we saw a few of the rare silversword plants, but no invisible cows … that’s why they’re called invisible …
Best road sign ever
The higher we climbed, the rocky landscape became covered with quite a bit of snow. At one turnout in the road, a small truck was parked and two guys were shoveling snow into the pickup bed to take it back home.
We'll get there when we get there
When we arrived at the summit, there were a few other scattered visitors, but we pretty much had it all to ourselves, which was nice.
- The most memorable GPS waypoint of the entire trip
The Gimlet, proving himself as stubborn as our senior team member in his own way, insisted on wearing a short-sleeved aloha shirt at the snowcapped summit, because “We’re in Hawaii!”
We left the mountain before sunset, because we weren’t sure we could find the narrow, steep road in the dark.
We spent another 45 minutes or so at the visitor station to settle our high altitude wooziness before continuing along the Saddle Road through rolling Waimea pasture land to the Kohala coast.
If we return to Mauna Kea, we would bring lunch with us to eat at the visitor information station, thus providing more time to acclimate, and visit early enough in the afternoon so we could tour the observatories which offer tours. A guided sunset and stargazing tour would be fun, too. The video below shows the spectacular night sky as seen from Mauna Kea.
The White Mountain from charles on Vimeo.
Further Reading:
- Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station
- Mauna Kea Observatories
- Mauna Kea, A Guide to Hawaii’s Sacred Mountain, a must-read guidebook to get the most out of your visit
- Hawaii photo album in the Gimlet Gallery
- Next post: Finally, some beach time
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Tags: hawaii
