Mauna Kea

At 13,796 ft, just over 4,100 meters, Hawaii’s tallest mountain is on the Big Island. It seems to start at the coast on either side of the island and just keep gradually rising from there before summitting high in the sky above the centre of the island. The skies around the summit are some of the clearest on earth so atop of Mauna Kea are what from below look like lots of oversized golf balls, but when you get up close are huge and very expensive observatories. The UK, NASA, Japan, Canada and more all have observatories up here making it the biggest collection in the world. Although we have stood higher than the summit of Mauna Kea (on Kala Pattar at 5,545m) have we stood on a taller mountain?? Well, bizarrely, apparently not. Although Everest is the highest in the world above sea level that doesn’t make it the tallest, infact Mauna Kea is. It rises from the sea bed around 9,100m below so is actually around 13,300m tall…don’t ask me, I’m just relaying facts, but to confuse matters more, the mountain on the other side of the valley, Mauna Lao, is the largest mountain in the world but its not as tall as Mauna Kea – work that one out, all to do with volume! Anyway we have now stood on top of the tallest mountain in the world! So early one evening we started our drive out to the visitors centre 2/3rds the way up, unfortunately our little Hyundai isn’t allowed up to these parts because of road conditions and altitude sickness (us getting sick not the car) so we are on a tour. We check out the centre, with its gadgets, gizmo’s and graphs doing lots of clever things – none of which I really understand, so I opted for looking at pictures instead of far away galaxy’s while Shona got all excited over the big telescopes and the weird silversword plants growing outside. We were given big warm coats and got back in the 4wd van heading for the top, we have gone from sea level to over 4,100m and 30+ degrees to 0 in about 3 hours. The satellites and golf balls are all huge and busy doing what they do but they give the place a slight alien feel and also make for a good foreground for some sunset pics. While I sit propped up against an outhouse to get out of the freezing wind and watch the sun slowly drop off the edge of the world, Shona headed off to find the actual heighest point on the mountain, can’t sit still that one! It was a stunning sunset but it soon got bloody cold afterwards so we quickly headed back down the mountain stopping about 1000ft above the visitors centre to have a quick guided tour of the solar system – big dippers, belts, wolves, bears and lots of other constellations are pointed out to us…incredibly interesting but all a little lost on me as all I saw was a bunch of stars not quite getting the wolves mane or a bears back leg! Did see Mars, Saturn and Venus though – although once again just looked like other bright stars! Shona promised to show me on a map later but with her current lack of coordination we may struggle to find the nearest starbucks let alone the north star.