2015/03 Hawaii trip - Saddle Road |
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Sunday March 1st
One of those trips was going to be on a whale-watching boat, and it began from Kona-side, and we’d have to drive across the island to get there. We’d heard inconsistent stories about the road so we thought we should check it out before we had a boat to catch.
The Saddle Road climbs from sea level in Hilo to over 6000 feet at the saddle between the two biggest volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, and then drops to sea level again at Waikoloa. The first road was built by the military in 1942 and they built it in a hurry. It was so bad after fifty years of neglect that rental car companies banned the use of the road; renters had to take a much longer route around the coast. However, it’s been rebuilt in the last decade 
and most of it is a three lane highway, about the best road we drove on the island. Bits of the old road still exist and are used in military e
xercises.
It was still wet and there was little to see except for lava fields and scrubby forest. At the highest point of the saddle, both mountains were hidden by clouds, and we were surrounded by lava and grass and cinder cones. But we could see one hill covered in forest, and stopped for a look. The hill is called Pu’u Huluhulu or hairy hill and we walked the trail up and over the hill. It is an old cinder cone and the forest has had time to colonize its slopes; the surrounding lava fields are more recent, flowing out of Mauna Loa.
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Saddle (0.30) |
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Part of 
the hike was below black cinder cliffs, and part in a forest of stunted trees. It was cool up there but the day was clearing; we were getting glimpses of the snow on the summit of Mauna Kea. Snow on Hawaii? Yes, the mountain is high enough at 13796 feet to have 
permafrost year-round and snow in the winter months. During the last Ice Age it even had glaciers.
From the top we could see the road going up to Mauna Kea’s summit. This would be one of our trips, booked for later in the week, as a 4wd is required for the last leg through the snow zone. On our drive down the other side of the Saddle we could see west to Hualālai, the extinct volcano that overlooks the Kona coast. As we approached Waikoloa, we could also see Kohala, the volcano to the north, also extinct.