2015/03 Hawaii trip - Mauna Kea |
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We drove up the Saddle Road again and wondered if we were doing the right thing. We were driving through clouds in a white-out. Fortunately, we emerged just before the turn off and the Mauna Kea Road had only patchy cloud, though it was still wet and windy.
We came to barriers; as expected, the rest of the road was closed above 9000 feet, and a ranger was sitting there in his truck to make sure nobody tried to sneak around. The visitor centre was small and steamy and focused on the astronomy aspects of the mountain with videos of the many observatories and their discoveries. The Englishman running the store had had a similar job in England, applied for the Hawaiian job, and much to his surprise got it, and had been there eight years.
We took a short walk up the mountain to see the silverswords. These are a group of really strange relatives of the sunflower, unique to the lava surfaces of Hawaii. Those on Mauna Kea grow nowhere else. As you can see from the picture of us the weather was a bit grim. 4000 feet above us at the observatories it was probably a whole lot worse.
There was no sign of our tour company so everyone else must have cancelled too, but there was a bunch of people who’d traveled up from Kona-side. We could only assume that the weather was better there as they were dressed for the beach and did not look comfortable! We returned to the warmer rain of Keaau.