A day on the mountain...

A day on the mountain...  Yesterday morning we took off bright and early, heading down to Hilo and then up Saddle Road, which runs between the two biggest mountains on the island: Mauna Loa (to the south) and Mauna Kea (to the north).  Right in the middle of that road we turned onto the Mauna Kea access road, which eventually will take you all the way to the summit where the telescopes are.  We got off that road at around the six mile mark, though, and headed in a 40 mile long arc counter-clockwise around Mauna Kea, ending up in the town of Waimea, north of the mountain.  Most of the time we were between 6,000 and 8,000 feet high, on a dirt road that varied between a nice, flat back road easily handled by a two-wheel drive sedan all the way to a challenging four-wheel drive only road that took my full attention to navigate.

On the drive down to Hilo we got our first glimpses of Mauna Kea, and we were surprised just how clearly we could see it.  The Hilo side of the island is normally very humid, and the air consequently hazy.  There are many, many days when you can't see Mauna Kea from Hilo at all (and vice versa), but the day's exceptional clarity meant we could not only see the mountain, but even with our naked eye we could pick out the telescopes, snow fields near the summit, and broad bands of color around the mountain.  It had three distinct layers of color, even from 40 miles away in Hilo: reds and browns at the top, where cinder lies exposed and barren; yellowish brown in the middle; and a million shades of green on the bottom where the forests and pasture lands dominate.

As we got closer to the mountain while on Saddle Road, the middle band became more distinctly yellow, and it finally dawned on us why that was so: nearly all the gorse on the mountain was simultaneously in bloom.  Gorse is an invader, its seeds brought in with the grain that early ranchers purchased from Scotland for their cattle.  It has no enemies here in Hawai'i – nothing eats it or kills it.  The high, dry, bare sides of the mountain are excellent habitat for it – so it has spread remorselessly since its introduction.  Eradicating it is a high priority for those working to restore native habitats.  But...today it predominates in a broad range of altitudes on the east side of Mauna Kea – and the first third or so of our drive around the mountain was right through the middle of it.  The photos below all show gorse; darn near every plant was in bloom.  We've only seen it before with occasional plants in bloom, so this was quite a display.  The scent of gorse is like a mild, coconutty suntan lotion – and in mass bloom like we drove through that scent became part of the background.

In several of the photos below you can spot the cindery higher parts of Mauna Kea.  In the seventh photo in particular you can see Mauna Kea's summit and some of the telescopes there.  But look closely at that one: to the right of the summit you'll see what looks like a higher peak, more distant than Mauna Kea.  That's an illusion; in fact, that “taller” peak was much closer to us than Mauna Kea's summit, and over 1,000 feet shorter.  The clarity of the air and the lack of objects to provide relative scale creates all sorts of illusions like this. 

After we left the land of gorse, we entered koa territory.  The photos above include a few koa, as the gorse and koa territories overlap considerably.  The photos below were all taken across the northern half of Mauna Kea, more koa than anyone but a koa nut like me would want. :)  I love koa – they're my favorite tree, and in no small part that's because of the koas on the north side of Mauna Kea.  These photos were all taken in the now-defunct Parker Ranch lands.  When we first started coming here, about 40 years ago, the ranch was still going full tilt.  We saw cowboys on horses driving vast herds of beef cattle through this area.  Now the lands are mostly owned by private and public nature preservation groups until you get quite close to the town of Waimea.  Leftover structures and equipment (like the sheep's feet at right) litter the entire area.  There are no more cowboys and cattle to be seen.  But, on this trip, for the first time in our many trips here, we saw something else: vast numbers of small koa trees.  Some were seedlings sprouted just this year; others looked like they were ten or twelve years old.  During the day it occurred to us that twelve years ago is when the cattle were all removed – so I'm speculating that the reason the pasture lands had only occasional individual koas (instead of the usual forests) is that the cattle killed the koa babies.  Koa killers!  I will never look at cattle the same way again!

But the great news is that the koa are propagating in this part of Mauna Kea at a prodigious rate.  Before the ranchers burned it all off to create pasture lands, the flanks of Mauna Kea were all a gigantic koa forest – and now it looks like things are headed that way again.  I won't live long enough to see it happen, but it feels really good to know that it's headed that way...

Right in the middle of the koa territory is a monument to Dr. David Douglas, a famous botanist who was one of my dad's heroes.  Douglas died here on the slopes of Mauna Kea, caught in a pig trap (a pit with stakes).  The Douglas fir is but one of hundreds of plant species either named for him or by him.  When I first visited this spot, perhaps 30 years ago, it was completely overrun by the forest.  I had a hard time even finding it (thought it's just 1/4 mile from the road), much less seeing it.  Over the years local botanical groups have gradually improved the site, until now the monument sits in a small park-like area, overhung by koa and Douglas fir, surrounded by native plants.  The trail is now a mowed path through a sparse koa forest with a grassy floor.  It's beautiful.  I was fortunate enough to bring my dad here in the '90s, when he was still vigorous.  He made the short hike down to the monument, quite moved by the experience.  He spoke of it often in his later years.  All these memories came flooding in as I stood before that monument yesterday; I walked back to our car slowly, choked up and full of tears...

As we got closer to Waimea, we lost altitude and eventually entered into a thick fog.  As we drove down the road, we noticed that anywhere a tree overhung the road, there was a wet spot on the road beneath – and raindrops would hit the car as we passed under.  What was happening there?  Well, its the wind-driven mist condensing on the tree leaves and then dripping down.  A lot of mist condensing, because it really was “raining” under these trees, and it was sopping wet, as you can see in the photos below.  Debbie put an earlier observation together with this phenomenon and figured out that we were seeing lush green grass under the trees because of this phenomenon; I'm sure she's right.

When we got to Waimea, at around 5:30, the first thing on our mind was to find a place to eat.  Debbie did some research online and picked Merriman's, and a fine pick it turned out to be.  This is very much an upscale restaurant, both in price and presentation.  The staff were unpretentious, totally approachable, and just a delight.  The food?  Well, let's just say I'd be happy to pay for that meal again.  It was superb.  We started with a mini loaf of bread, warm, with a delicious butter (herbed).  I had iced tea that had just a bit of passionfruit flavor, with a little flask of sugar syrup to sweeten it (nice touch, that).  Our shared appetizer was a quesadilla stuffed with kalua pork and caramelized onions.  We jumped on it so fast that I forgot to take photos of it, as I did with our entrees, too.  We each ordered an entree but we split them, so we both got some onago (local red snapper) and ono (a classic Hawai'ian fish).  They were cooked absolutely perfectly, not overpowered by any sauces, and were accompanied by wonderful local vegetables.  Finally, for dessert we shared a bread pudding topped with coconut sherbet (second photo below), and a creme brulee topped with burnt sugar mixed with coconut (first photo below) that came with some macadamia nut cookies.  Both were simply wonderful...