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Mauna Kea summit trip
Mar. 23rd, 2010 07:37 pmOur host for this trip was Mauna Kea Summit Adventures. They picked us up in the middle of nowhere, a small pull-out beside the highway where "the Saddle Road" that passes through the highlands between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa meets the main highway into Waimea. Our host was Chris, a chatty former geology student from Arizona who kept up a steady patter of interesting tidbits but with a real "dude!" attitude that belied his seeming age (30-something). Saddle Road runs alongside a U.S. army training ground; we didn't see any tanks or artillery, but both used to be common there, and the artillery used to fire across the road! The ground surface is largely ash deposits until you get much higher on the slopes of the volcanoes, and never really packs down, so you can still see tank tracks from World War II.
Mauna Kea is a dormant or possibly extinct (opinions vary) volcano. In any event, it's stable enough to have several hundred million dollars worth of astronomical equipment there, so basically pretty safe. The slopes of the volcano start out well vegetated, but quickly become barren of all but the most hardy vegetation. One of the unexpected local plants is the familiar North American mullein, which isn't really eaten by anything and which persists in harsh environments. It's recognizable from a distance, but many of the plants have a bizarre shepherd's crook at the top. There's also a patch of "Mauna Kea silversword", a species that was formerly thought to be extinct. It was recently discovered near the visitor's center (see below), and is now slowly being reintroduced onto the mountain slopes. It's a pretty but spiky little plant that looks from a distance a bit like a cross between an aloe and a pincushion, with thinner leaves that have a glaucous blue-green tinge.
Once the plants disappear at higher altitudes, the slopes are basically a moonscape dotted with large cinder cones and scree slopes with a wide range of lava colors; the lava starts out black, and turns brownish as the iron oxidizes. One part of the ascent is called "moon valley" because NASA tested the first lunar rovers there. There's also a stretch where you see a thin line of moisture seeping out along a clear interface between two layers of ash deposit: this is melting permafrost, and Mauna Kea is the only tropical volcano with a permafrost layer left over from the last glaciation.
We stopped at the Onizuka visitor's center (renamed as a memorial to the Hawaiian astronaut who died in the shuttle explosion) at around 9000 feet, and had a surprisingly good bento dinner (a small box of meat, veggies, and rice). Not up to restaurant standards, but as picknicks go, still pretty good. Part of the goal of dinner is to give you an hour or so to adapt to the higher altitude. Jacquie, our hostess at the Waipio Wayside Inn (our base for this expedition) sent us away with a small bar of really good organic chocolate; the chocolate is supposed to be good protection against altitude sickness, so I plan to consume much chocolate prophylactically just in case the change of altitude from sea level to our bedroom is a potential health threat.
At the peak, which is just under 14 thousand feet, there's only 60% of the oxygen and air pressure that there is at sea level, and some people (up to 5% of all tourists) experience serious and possibly life-threatening altitude sickness. It's a purely random thing, apparently, and not related to whether you're fit or not—just how your individual body responds. The tour guides carry oxygen tanks, just in case, but the only cure if it strikes you is to descend quickly to an altitude with thicker air. We didn't have any serious problems, but were certainly knocked on our collective ass by the low oxygen; it felt like a combination of being significantly drunk (very lightheaded) and having considerable difficulty catching your breath. I found that taking as deep a breath as possible and holding it helped, but it was still a bit disorienting and uncomfortable at times. I wouldn't have wanted to stay much longer than we did (about 3 hours), but it was well worth experiencing to learn the limits of my body and to try overcoming them.
The observatories were mostly unimpressive because you can't see much: just the outer shell, which is "tin roof" chic. But one radiotelescope was open to the sky, and that's a considerably more interesting sight because of the internal framework, and the Hawaiian component of the "very long baseline" radiotelescope array is fully open to the elements. Someone described it as resembling one of the Martian landers from War of the Worlds, and it's easy to see why. We stayed through sunset, which was gorgeous, and probably the only sunset I'll ever see from that altitude. It's also fascinating to stand on an island surrounded by an ocean of clouds, with the only other visible land being Mauna Loa on the southern horizon.
After the light had faded, our guides brought out big 11-inch Celestron telescopes, and gave us a star show. Interestingly, they had powerful green laser pointers, and there's enough mist or particulates or whatever in the air that they could use them to clearly point out individual stars. (Either that or the sky was painted on a dome 30 feet overhead. Conspiracy theorists chime in here!) I would never have thought to try that, but it was certainly cool that someone did! We saw one nice globular cluster (the Beehive cluster), the Orion nebula, and Saturn's rings plus four of the large moons. Plus more stars visible to the naked eye than I've ever seen before, even in the country (it's obvious why they chose this location for an observatory), one meteor, and two satellites transiting overhead. We concluded with a view of the crescent moon, with a sharp terminator and crystal-clear crater edges.
On the way down again, Chris told us that winter skiing is a hugely popular event on Mauna Kea. (Not without risk, since the ground is littered with sharp lava boulders that lurk under the snow.) The volcano receives significant snow most years, and each time snow accumulates, a few hundred people ride up the mountain to ski and snowboard, and it turns into quite the party. Typically you go with a bunch of friends and a couple four-wheel-drive vehicles, and take turns plunging downhill and then giving your buds a lift back up to the top while you wait your turn. On a good day, you can get in 15 or more runs of up to a thousand or two feet. Then you fill the back of your truck with snow, head to the nearest beach, build a snowman, and have a beach party. At the end, you pour syrup on the snowman's head and eat his brains... and send digital photos to your friends, none of whom believes you didn't create the photo in Photoshop.
Mauna Kea is a dormant or possibly extinct (opinions vary) volcano. In any event, it's stable enough to have several hundred million dollars worth of astronomical equipment there, so basically pretty safe. The slopes of the volcano start out well vegetated, but quickly become barren of all but the most hardy vegetation. One of the unexpected local plants is the familiar North American mullein, which isn't really eaten by anything and which persists in harsh environments. It's recognizable from a distance, but many of the plants have a bizarre shepherd's crook at the top. There's also a patch of "Mauna Kea silversword", a species that was formerly thought to be extinct. It was recently discovered near the visitor's center (see below), and is now slowly being reintroduced onto the mountain slopes. It's a pretty but spiky little plant that looks from a distance a bit like a cross between an aloe and a pincushion, with thinner leaves that have a glaucous blue-green tinge.
Once the plants disappear at higher altitudes, the slopes are basically a moonscape dotted with large cinder cones and scree slopes with a wide range of lava colors; the lava starts out black, and turns brownish as the iron oxidizes. One part of the ascent is called "moon valley" because NASA tested the first lunar rovers there. There's also a stretch where you see a thin line of moisture seeping out along a clear interface between two layers of ash deposit: this is melting permafrost, and Mauna Kea is the only tropical volcano with a permafrost layer left over from the last glaciation.
We stopped at the Onizuka visitor's center (renamed as a memorial to the Hawaiian astronaut who died in the shuttle explosion) at around 9000 feet, and had a surprisingly good bento dinner (a small box of meat, veggies, and rice). Not up to restaurant standards, but as picknicks go, still pretty good. Part of the goal of dinner is to give you an hour or so to adapt to the higher altitude. Jacquie, our hostess at the Waipio Wayside Inn (our base for this expedition) sent us away with a small bar of really good organic chocolate; the chocolate is supposed to be good protection against altitude sickness, so I plan to consume much chocolate prophylactically just in case the change of altitude from sea level to our bedroom is a potential health threat.
At the peak, which is just under 14 thousand feet, there's only 60% of the oxygen and air pressure that there is at sea level, and some people (up to 5% of all tourists) experience serious and possibly life-threatening altitude sickness. It's a purely random thing, apparently, and not related to whether you're fit or not—just how your individual body responds. The tour guides carry oxygen tanks, just in case, but the only cure if it strikes you is to descend quickly to an altitude with thicker air. We didn't have any serious problems, but were certainly knocked on our collective ass by the low oxygen; it felt like a combination of being significantly drunk (very lightheaded) and having considerable difficulty catching your breath. I found that taking as deep a breath as possible and holding it helped, but it was still a bit disorienting and uncomfortable at times. I wouldn't have wanted to stay much longer than we did (about 3 hours), but it was well worth experiencing to learn the limits of my body and to try overcoming them.
The observatories were mostly unimpressive because you can't see much: just the outer shell, which is "tin roof" chic. But one radiotelescope was open to the sky, and that's a considerably more interesting sight because of the internal framework, and the Hawaiian component of the "very long baseline" radiotelescope array is fully open to the elements. Someone described it as resembling one of the Martian landers from War of the Worlds, and it's easy to see why. We stayed through sunset, which was gorgeous, and probably the only sunset I'll ever see from that altitude. It's also fascinating to stand on an island surrounded by an ocean of clouds, with the only other visible land being Mauna Loa on the southern horizon.
After the light had faded, our guides brought out big 11-inch Celestron telescopes, and gave us a star show. Interestingly, they had powerful green laser pointers, and there's enough mist or particulates or whatever in the air that they could use them to clearly point out individual stars. (Either that or the sky was painted on a dome 30 feet overhead. Conspiracy theorists chime in here!) I would never have thought to try that, but it was certainly cool that someone did! We saw one nice globular cluster (the Beehive cluster), the Orion nebula, and Saturn's rings plus four of the large moons. Plus more stars visible to the naked eye than I've ever seen before, even in the country (it's obvious why they chose this location for an observatory), one meteor, and two satellites transiting overhead. We concluded with a view of the crescent moon, with a sharp terminator and crystal-clear crater edges.
On the way down again, Chris told us that winter skiing is a hugely popular event on Mauna Kea. (Not without risk, since the ground is littered with sharp lava boulders that lurk under the snow.) The volcano receives significant snow most years, and each time snow accumulates, a few hundred people ride up the mountain to ski and snowboard, and it turns into quite the party. Typically you go with a bunch of friends and a couple four-wheel-drive vehicles, and take turns plunging downhill and then giving your buds a lift back up to the top while you wait your turn. On a good day, you can get in 15 or more runs of up to a thousand or two feet. Then you fill the back of your truck with snow, head to the nearest beach, build a snowman, and have a beach party. At the end, you pour syrup on the snowman's head and eat his brains... and send digital photos to your friends, none of whom believes you didn't create the photo in Photoshop.