We had booked a tour with Mauna Kea Summit Adventures for the trip up to the 13, 700 foot top of the second highest mountain on the Big Island. (The biggest is Mauna Loa, located to the south and which is, by the way, the second largest volcano in the Solar system. The largest is on Mars.) At 4 PM we were picked up at the Starbucks in the Queens Shops plaza a short distance down the road from the hotel. It was an hour and twenty minute ride up the slopes of Mauna Kea through some extremely dry country.
Pat, our guide and driver and owner of the tour company, said it had not rained in a year and most of the animals were dying off. All that was left were the Hawaiian owls, one of which we saw, and the wild donkeys.
The wild donkeys are feral, having been released by coffee growers in favor of tractors. They have multiplied (a male is called a jack, and a female a jenny). As developers came in they planned to thin or eliminate the herds, but an animal rights group formed a program called “Save our Asses” to get a more humane population control method. So the jacks and jennies are kept separate as best they can. It may be working because we never saw a donkey.
We stopped for dinner at the Onizuka Visitors Center at 9000 feet. The guide pointed out that there would be other groups there, mostly Japanese tourists and mostly women for some reason. There is a new Japanese telescope at the top of Mauna Kea, and they all want to see it.
Before we left the visitor center we took a short walk to see a blooming Silversword plant. they only grow at high altitudes in Hawaii and bloom after 20 to 50 years one time and then die. The blooming process takes about 6 months.
From there we did the last eight miles or so to the top, one of the steepest roads I can ever remember and pretty rough in some spots. Climbing 4700 feet in 8 miles has to be steep. We got to the 13,800 foot summit in time to see the 12 telescopes, covering everything from infrared, through visible light to millimeter wavelength radiation.
Kathy even had a sighting of an astronomer.
It was slightly below 40 degrees at the summit with a 15 knot wind which put the wind chill below freezing. Fortunately Mauna Kea Adventures supplied parkas and gloves.
At sunset we watched the sun go below the clouds and also the shadow of the mountain stretch far out to the east.
Then Pat said we had to start down for an appointment at around 7:30. So we headed partway down the steep road and pulled into a branch road and got out in time to see one of the highlights of the trip. To our right was the Southern Cross and to our left was the North Star. This is one of the few place on earth you can see both at the same time. Pat pointed out a moving light coming out of the Southern Cross, it was the International Space Station (ISS). We watched it fly under the moon and followed it until it disappeared over the north east horizon.
From there we headed down to an open area at about 9000 feet. Two 11 inch telescopes were set up and we got to look at several celestial features, including omega Centauri, a globular cluster of stars that looks like grains of salt on a black table, the Ring Nebula, which looks like a green smoke ring, the craters on the Moon and most impressive, the Rings of Saturn plus two of its moons including Titan and one of the other 61 moons.
We headed down the mountain and got back to the Marriott about 11:30PM.
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