Tuesday morning Amy, who had not been with us during the
previous nights late night activities, walked towards the kitchen, and saw what
appeared to be some wildlife that had snuck into the kitchen and was resting on
the table watching the waterfall through the window. After several failed attempts at shooing the
animal away from afar, she realized the object was inanimate. She later learned the story of the goat
statue that we found high atop the cabinets.
Taryn and I had our rescheduled appointment for our Volcanos
Helicopter ride. We went into the
kitchen to get a quick breakfast, and headed over to the airport for the second
time this week with hopes of a successful ride.
To our dismay, our corner of Hawaii was very rainy. Our weather apps on our phones showed that
most of this side of the island was currently under some cloud cover. Nonetheless, we hoped for the best and headed
to the airport to check in for our ride.
After sitting for a half hour or so, they called our names, only to
inform us that the helicopter had some maintenance issues, and we again could
either receive a refund, or reschedule.
So for a second time, we rescheduled for later in the week.
After doing a quick bit of shopping for some necessities for
ourselves and our housemates, we stopped to pick up the Toyota 4Runner we had reserved
for the afternoons trek to the summit of Mauna Kea. This was a hugely welcomed change from the
Chevy Spark Taryn and I had been driving in for the last few days. The Spark was about as small of a car as I’ve
ever seen in the US. Without joking, two
days earlier, we were trying to accelerate after a light turned green, and we
were passed handily by an old man on a moped, while our car sounded like it was
revving up to 6000 rpms and went from 0 to 35mph in about 25.2 seconds.
 |
| Our Chevy Spark: Fits in the Trunk of Most Other Cars |
We drove the 4Runner back to the house, but had some time
before we planned on starting the mountain expedition. Taryn and I decided to go find some trails to
hike to fill up the time. After
researching a few, it looked liked the Kaumana Caves would fit our schedule the
best. This was just outside Hilo. We grabbed some supplies through them in our backpacks,
and headed out. The entrance to the
caves was right along the main road that ran near our house. A well marked staircase descended towards the
caves, where we had a choice of going right or left. We started to the right and wandered into a fairly
large volcanic rock cave. This cave wasn’t
tremendously deep, but went several hundred feet in one direction. The floor was full of rocky piles, and especially
with Taryn’s toe injury from the day before, was a little bit difficult to
climb through. We went in a bit and
looked around, and then headed towards the other side of the staircase.
This appeared to be a fairly small cave, only a couple
hundred feet deep, but at the far end, there was a rock shelf about 5 feet
high, with some lavarocks under it. I
looked curiously behind it, as it seemed like there might be something under
this shelf about 20 feet back. I asked
Taryn if she’d indulge me for a moment, and I crawled under and went to the
back. Sure enough, there was an old lava
tube that opened up to be 7-10 feet In diameter and we could walk through. I went back to Taryn, and after a little
coaxing she came in as well, and we continued walking through it with the help
of a flashlight. We walked about an 8th
of a mile, but decided to turn back for a couple different reasons. (later I read that this tube apparently can
be traversed for quite some distance possibly several miles.)
After this brief hike, Taryn suggested getting some
smoothies at a hippy dippy place she found called the Sweet Cane Cafe. She ordered the Go Green smoothie, in order
to get her kale fix for the day, and I got a smoothie called Date Daze (I
think) which had dates, cinnamon, blueberries, and some other yummy healthy
stuff. It was tremendously sweet, but
very good.
Before heading back to the house, we had to do a quick drive
by of the BJ Penn
Training and Fitness Center. Taryn,
who is a big fan of MMA, had been very excited to see this, and needed to at
least take a picture of the building and send it to her brother and a few
friends who also shared her affection for MMA.
As we drove past, Taryn mused at how cool it would be if she went inside
and found BJ Penn there. I had said I’m sure he just loves when tourists do
that. She responded, “Oh he would be
happy to see me!” I asked why that was,
and she gave the obvious answer: “Because I’m a pretty girl and want to see him…” We decided to afford BJ a bit of privacy and
decided against this.
We headed back to the house to gather the rest of our group
for our trek up to Mauna Kea. We had
about 45 minutes, so I decided to take a quick hike behind our house to the
waterfall and take some pictures, shared below.
When I headed back, we put together some food for the
evening, packed up the car, and all 6 of us piled into the 4Runner to head to
the mountain.
Mauna Kea is the highest point of the state of Hawaii, at
13,803 feet above sea level. The
mountain however, measured from its base at the ocean floor, is actually 33,100
feet. More than twice the size of Mt.
Everest’s base-to-peak height. Though it
is extremely high, the above-sea-level base has a very small perimeter, and it
can be ascended via car very quickly. So
quickly, in fact, that visitors or told they should stop at the Visitor center
(at 9,000 feet) and rest at least a half an hour to eliminate risk of altitude
sickness. It is also stated that no
vehicle besides those with off road capabilities and 4 wheel drive should
attempt to climb past the visitor’s center.
There is only one rental place that allows their vehicle’s to be used
for this purpose: Harper’s Rentals, and this is where we had
picked up our 4Runner.
As we ascended the roughly 8 miles from Saddle Road to get
to the Visitor Information Station (VIS).
This was a surreal drive as you go from roughly 2500 feet to 9000 feet
over these 8 miles. For most of the
drive we were surrounded by dense fog.
The further we went up, the more surreal the vegetation and surroundings
looked. Instead of shrubs and trees,
there were strange dead looking single stem “sticks” jutting out from the
ground about 4-5 feet high each, with grotesque looking leaves or something at
there ends. RJ described them best by
saying “They look like some sort of plant like corpse arms jutting out of the
ground all over.” He also likened it to
something from Silent Hill. That comment made the ride even more eerie.
 |
| Driving to the VIS |
When we got to the VIS, we got out of the car, and began an
hour long wait. Though a half hour is
recommended at least, we figured this would minimize any risks even
further. The VIS has snacks, drinks,
souvenirs and a seating area to watch videos about the mountain while you
wait. As you walk in however, there two
large Warning signs at the door. I
stopped and began reading them. Taryn
and Amy walked over a couple minutes later and Amy asked “what all do those
say?” I answered “They list the 500 or
so ways you can die if you continue beyond this point to the summit.”
Truthfully that is pretty much what they did say. They discussed the potential for below zero
temps, 100 mph winds, unfiltered UV rays from the sun, altitude sickness, icy
roads, brake failure if inappropriate cars are used, or appropriate cars are
used incorrectly in ascending/descending the summit. To add to this, when you
walked the building there was a poster emphasizing the usage of low 4 wheel
drive to allow for engine braking down the mountain, as opposed to utilizing
the cars brake system. This poster had
several pictures of the consequences of not using engine braking. These pictures were cars that were demolished
due to tumbling down the side of the mountain, or having plowed into the
vehicles in front of them. This did
absolutely nothing to help Amy’s nerves, who was very nervous about this activity
to start.
As we waited, Ryan bowed out of the rest of the expedition,
as he was already having some respiratory issues at this altitude, and was not
comfortable continuing the ascent. So he
agreed to stay at the VIS until we returned in a couple hours. After the one hour mark, the remaining 5 of
us headed up the remaining 8 miles of road to the summit. We had all read the warning signs of altitude
sickness, and were careful to watch for them…headache, nausea, confusion,
acting erratically, and making poor decisions…though we thought this still may
be difficult to discern from some of the rest of the portions of our trip that
didn’t include altitude.
The first 5 miles from the VIS were a gravel road, and the
last 3 were paved. After a couple miles
we got to a height where we were no longer in the clouds. Suddenly we could see over them, and could
see the drop-offs that were commonly along-side the road we were driving. Amy did what she could to distract herself
from the fear of a sudden plunging death, while the rest of us took in the
scenery. Jason stated it best in a mix
of profundity and matter-of-fact type speak:
“Well that certainly doesn’t suck.”
When we arrived at the top, the view was definitely breath
taking. It is a very odd sensation to
see the clouds that are usually above you, hugging part of the ground thousands
of feet below you, even though you yourself are standing on ground. When we got out to walk around, the
temperature was in the high 40s and most of us were at least a little light
headed. We walked around for an hour or
so, and took a bunch of pictures. Since
there is very little atmosphere to filter out UV rays, most of us put on some
extra sunblock. Taryn provided a bottle
that was of course all natural, but was meant to create a barrier to the skin
as opposed to soaking into the skin. Amy
didn’t quite understand this, and ended up putting on a little too much, and
ended up making a very good impersonation of a mime.
 |
| Ceremonial Summit of Mauna Kea |
 |
| Observatory |
After exploring sufficiently, we got in the car and headed
back to the VIS. We contemplated climbing
the ceremonial summit to make an offering of the aforementioned, all powerful, Vegan
Beef Jerky, however we decided against it.
Jason decided he wanted to make lava-rock angels along side the
road. He jumped out of the car at one
point when we stopped, and began removing some of this clothing in order to do
so. Michelle and Amy however decided to
ruin the fun and made him get back in. (Taryn and I, for the record, thought it
was a grand idea. ) Perhaps however this
was part of the “poor decisions” we had read about associated with altitude sickeness.
 |
| Vegan Beef Jerky Offerring? |
As we continued, we debated how RJ had spent his extended
period of time in the VIS. The most
likely answer we came up with was that he probably had started his own cult,
and we would walk in on a circle of people all staring with vacant eyes and
listening to him.
We got to the VIS shortly before sundown. The Perseids meteor shower was going on
tonight, and this was a good place to watch it.
We sat for a couple more hours, and ate the food we brought up with
us. Clouds continued to form and
dissipate while we were watching, but we did have a few periods of insanely
clear visibility that allowed us to see a canopy of thousands of stars. All in all however we only saw 4-5 meteors
and finally decided to trek back home and call it a night.
No comments:
Post a Comment