The Hawai'i That Was: Mauna O Wakea, the Opening to the Heavens, and the Realm of Ice

It's hard for me as a person of European descent to imagine what the first Polynesians to arrive at the islands thought of Hawaii's highest mountain. Mauna Kea, the "White Mountain", or Mauna O Wakea, the mountain of the god Wakea, the "expanse of the sky", rises to a height of 13,802 feet (4,207 meters), just slightly higher than its more massive neighbor Mauna Loa (13,679 feet; 4,169 meters). It's a reasonable assumption (spoken here by the amateur) that the first people to arrive had no cultural memories of erupting volcanoes, but even more to the point, no cultural memories of ice. But ice is what they found on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

A mountain nearly 14,000 feet high casts a very long shadow (2009)

Wait a moment. Ice? Snow? In Hawai'i? It's true that the islands are in the tropics, but altitude makes up for a lot where snow and ice are concerned. In other parts of the world near the equator, for instance the Andes and the Himalayas, glaciers and snow are not unusual. But none of the other islands of Polynesia approach an elevation anywhere close to that of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea (along with Haleakala on the island of Maui). Snow often falls in winter, and storms in summer sometimes leave ice on the summit (the snow patches in picture below are from June of 2009). During the ice ages, Mauna Kea was even covered by glaciers! During at least two periods, between 70,000 and 150,000 years ago, and from 10,000 to 40,000 years ago, glacial ice covered about 28 square miles of the mountain's summit. Lava flows that were quenched by the ice produced an unusually hard basaltic rock that was prized by Native Hawaiians for tool-making in the years before iron arrived on the islands, carried by Europeans ships.

The Polynesians may have had their origins in New Guinea or Taiwan, but something more than a thousand years may have separated the native Hawaiians from any ancestors who ever laid eyes on snow-covered mountains. This was something new for them. The strange landscape of Mauna Kea soon became to them a holy place, a spot that was the origin of all people as a result of the relationship of the gods Wakea (the aforementioned "expanse of the sky") and Papahānaumoku (the Earth mother, or "she who gave birth to the islands"). Many on the islands continue their traditions of worship on the mountain (below).

An altar near Pu'u Huluhulu at Saddle Road Summit, just south of Mauna Kea.

And that's where the conflict starts. Wakea is the god of the "expanse of the heavens", and the summit of Mauna Kea certainly offers what may be the world's best view of the heavens, due to the high elevation (over more than 40% of the atmosphere), very low air turbulence, lack of light pollution, and the extremely clean dry air, far from any sources of pollution. The relatively gentle slopes provide for vehicular access. Since 1970, 13 state-of-the-art observatories have been constructed on the summit of Mauna Kea. The fourteenth observatory was supposed to begin construction last year, but massive protests and a legal suit have postponed any further building for the time being.

It's a conundrum. The argument isn't simply a religion versus science debate. There are concerns about the effect of the project on the ecosystems of the mountain, as well as the movement of groundwater. A great many endemic and endangered species cling to existence on the upper slopes of the mountain. Some of those who are invested in the sacred aspects of the debate don't actually oppose the telescope, seeing a relationship between a god who represents "the expanse of the skies" with the new-found ability of humans to see farther into the cosmos using the technology that we have created. Others most certainly see the construction of yet another observatory (and the biggest one yet, with a larger "footprint") as a desecration of sacred ground. Imagine, perhaps, building a group of telescopes on the summit of Mount Sinai. There might be good scientific reasons for choosing the site, but it wouldn't sit well with those of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths.

Mauna Kea has been erupting for perhaps 1,000,000 years, but it is hard to say, since younger flows have covered the older ones. The volcano is presently dormant, with no eruptions any time within the last 4,500 years. That doesn't mean it is dead. A new eruption at the summit could certainly make any discussions concerning telescope-building moot (although some would consider it a statement from Wakea).

We saw Mauna Kea from several directions during our recent exploration of the island. It greeted on clear mornings from our hotel in Hilo (above), and we had a spectacular view of the mountain from the upper slopes of Kohala, another long-dormant shield on the north end of the Big Island (below). One evening we drove to the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy at the 9,000 foot level of the mountain for a star-viewing (these are held nightly). The skies are truly pristine, and our students saw the constellation of the Southern Cross for the first time in their lives (it of course lies hidden beneath the horizon in our more northerly climes).

Three major shield volcanoes on the Big Island, as seen from a fourth. We are standing on Kohala, looking at Mauna Kea (left), Mauna Loa (mostly hidden by clouds in the center), and Hualalai (right).

This post is part of a blog series on the Hawai'i That Was, an exploration of the pre-human, and pre-European history of the Hawaiian Islands, which was the objective of the field course we conducted a few weeks ago. In the next post, we will move on from Hilo and the active volcanoes and have a look at the Kona Coast.

The Southern Cross is the kite-shaped group of stars on the left side of the photo. Taken from the patio at the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy

Watching the Hazy Sun Sink into the Sea (almost)

The sun was almost sinking into the sea, since the coast is oriented a bit too much towards the south. I'm in Southern California for family matters (of a happier kind), and had the opportunity to watch the sunset from out on Balboa Pier. It's always fascinating to watch waves from the back side, and they were particularly rough tonight. It was beautiful. I can't help but hear the words of one of the Eagles' finest songs, "The Last Resort". This especially after spending weeks exploring the wild corners of the Hawaiian Islands, followed by a trip through the urban nightmare of Los Angeles. The beaches around Balboa are almost entirely artificial, having been extensively altered around a century ago. The houses are lined up almost wall to wall, and there isn't much of a natural feel at all. And yet, at the right moment the beauty shines through. The lyrics I selected below are all the property of the Eagles (RIP Glenn Frey).

She heard about a place people were smilin',
They spoke about the red man's way, how they loved the land
And they came from everywhere to the Great Divide
Seeking a place to stand or a place to hide

Down in the crowded bars out for a good time,
Can't wait to tell you all what it's like up there
And they called it paradise, I don't know why
Somebody laid the mountains low while the town got high

Then the chilly winds blew down across the desert,
Through the canyons of the coast to the Malibu
Where the pretty people play hungry for power
To light their neon way and give them things to do

Some rich man came and raped the land, nobody caught 'em,
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes and, Jesus, people bought 'em
And they called it paradise, the place to be,
They watched the hazy sun sinking in the sea

Who will provide the grand design, what is yours and what is mine?
'Cause there is no more new frontier, we have got to make it here
We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny and in the name of God

And you can see them there on Sunday morning
Stand up and sing about what it's like up there
They called it paradise, I don't know why
You call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye

If you don't know the song, I highly recommend it. You can listen to it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdx6oyBOVj0

The Hawai'i That Was: How Can the Biggest Mountain in the World Stay So Hidden?

Mauna Loa from the Mauna Kea Road near the Onizuka Center

The answer is easy: clouds. This whole post is a temper tantrum, a tantrum that resulted from the fact that we were on the Big Island of Hawai'i, the site of the biggest mountain on planet Earth, for nine days a few weeks ago. Despite repeated opportunities, my students never had a clear view of Mauna Loa, the volcano that covers more than half of the island. It was a rainy stretch of weather, so the best we ever got were brief peeks, kind of like watching an old-fashioned feather boa dance. So in response, I've drawn from the Geotripper archives to find pictures of Mauna Loa from earlier trips. Very sunny trips.

Mauna Loa from the Mauna Kea Road near the Onizuka Center

Clouds are not the least bit unusual on the slopes of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, the two highest peaks on the planet (as measured from the sea floor; of the two, Mauna Kea is slightly higher). The Hawaiian Islands lie in the path of the trade winds most of the year, and as the moist air masses rise against the gentle slopes of the massive shields, they cool and condense into clouds. Hilo is pretty much the wettest city in the United States, with more than 100 inches of rain each year. Oddly enough, an atmospheric inversion layer limits cloud formation to the lower slopes of the volcanoes. It's been more than once that I've left Hilo in a rainstorm only to find crystal clear skies up on the mountain (but not so much last week!). Exceptions, like earlier this month, happen when storm fronts come through. In winter, snow is not a rare occurrence on the high peaks.

Mauna Loa from the Mauna Kea Road above the Onizuka Center

Oceans have a lot to do with the fact that no one gets to see the entirety of Mauna Loa. It is the biggest mountain on the planet, as well as the biggest volcano (although the Tamu Massif may be more voluminous), but it rises of the floor of the Pacific Ocean, with around 17,000 feet hidden beneath sea level.  A bit less than 14,000 feet rises above the waves. It depresses the sea floor another five miles, so the mountain could actually be said to be 56,000 feet high. It has a volume of 15,000-19,000 cubic miles.

Sunset on Mauna Loa from Mauna Kea. The brown air is vog from the eruptions at Kilauea on the other side of the mountain.

The volcano began erupting perhaps 700,000 years ago, and became an island around 400,000 years ago. It's hard to confirm since the older lava flows are hidden deep beneath the younger ones. The oldest exposed lavas (at the Ninole Hills) are about 200,000 years old. The giant shield continues to be very active, with 33 eruptions since 1843. The last eruption was in 1984, making this quiescent period the longest in recorded history (contrast that with the continuous eruptions at nearby Kilauea that started in 1983). The lava from the 1984 eruption came uncomfortably close to Hilo.

Mauna Loa from South Point, the imaginatively named southernmost point in the United States.

The gentle slopes of the volcano belie the true immensity of the mountain. To hike from the shoreline to summit is to simulate a trip from the tropics to the Arctic Circle. The slopes above 4,000 feet are among the most important bird habitat in the nation. Hawai'i is a gigantic open laboratory of evolution and the many native species have been decimated by environmental disruptions caused by the arrival of humans and their pigs, goats, rats, and mongooses. Even worse was the arrival of mosquitoes in the 1870s, as they are a vector for transmitting avian malaria. The native birds had no immunity. The mosquitoes can't thrive in the cooler conditions above 4,000 feet, so the mountains are an island within an island, providing sanctuary for the remaining survivors.

Mauna Loa looks almost insignificant in the morning light from Hilo Bay (below), but the summit is around forty miles away. The mountain is gigantic, and dangerous. And we barely got to see it earlier this month. But we knew it was there. We were surrounded by its flows in Hilo, at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, at South Point, and at Kona, a drive that took us 120 miles!

Mauna Loa from Hilo Bay

The Hawai'i That Was: Living on Uncertain Ground - The First Human Wave Arrives

The southeast coast of the Big Island of Hawai'i is a barren blasted land. One can blame it on the lack of rain, but though it is arid, rainfall is plentiful enough to support forests nearby. One only needs to look up the Holei Pali to know right away what the problem is: it's ground zero for the basalt flows emanating from the Kilauea shield complex. These slopes have been covered repeatedly by eruptions, most recently from 1969-75, and during the ongoing eruption that began in 1983. As we will see, each eruption is a paradox of creation and destruction.

The pali, or cliff, belies the description of a shield volcano with gentle slopes. It turns out that the southeast slope of Kilauea is sliding slowly into the sea, and the cliffs are actually giant fault scarps. To most people, "faults" means earthquakes, and there have been some powerful events in this area, including a 7.9 magnitude quake in 1868, and a 7.2 magnitude tremor in 1975 that killed two people.

We were headed down Chain of Craters Road in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park on the second day of our recent journey. The class, a hybrid course covering geology and anthropology, was having a first look at some of the archaeological sites on the Big Island, and as we looked around, it was hard to imagine living in this strange and ever-changing landscape. There is no development along the road, and yet, if you come across old maps, you will find a string of place names along the route: Kalapana Garden, Waha'ua Heiau, Royal Gardens, the Queen's Bath, the Black Sand Beach of Kaimu, and a national park visitor center. They are all gone now, buried in basalt lava flows. It's a tough land.

A section of the old Chain of Craters Road buried by lavas in the 1969-74 Mauna Ulu eruptions.

And yet, people have lived here, and for hundreds of years. Despite the lack of water and soil, despite a lack of coastal access, there are hundreds of archaeological sites that have not yet been buried beneath the advancing lava flows. The original Hawaiians were Polynesian voyagers, probably from the Marquesas Islands, 2,500 miles to the south (although legends speak of an earlier race of people, the Menehune). The timing of their arrival is debated, with estimates ranging from 1,700 to 800 years ago. Aside from rich fishing along the shorelines, there was little food for the colonizers, but they brought their own plants and animals to assure their survival: taro, breadfruit, banana, coconut, as well as pigs (pua'a) and chickens (moa), and unfortunately, rats. We checked out a small village site that was partially buried in the 1969-74 eruptions (below), and then headed to the Pu'u Loa Petroglyph Trail.

The arrival of humans on the islands heralded huge changes for the native plants and animals. For millions of years, the flora and fauna had evolved in isolation, and had few defenses to the effects of the grazing of pigs and the predation of rats. The first wave of human colonization resulted in extinctions or vast declines in the populations of native plants and animals, especially the birds.

What we know of the culture of the first Hawaiians comes from oral traditions, historical writings since European contact, and archaeological investigations of the older sites. More information comes from linguistic analysis of the Hawaiian dialect. To me, the amateur, the most fascinating hints of the past come from the intersection of humans with the rock: petroglyph art. The barren coastal plain at Pu'u Loa has the largest collection of petroglyphs on the island, with at least 23,000 individual carvings.

A relatively level trail crosses 0.75 miles of the basalt flows to the petroglyph site, where a boardwalk protects many of the carvings. Our ranger guide led us farther up the slopes to another field as well. The rock carvings carry a tremendous amount of religious and cultural significance, especially in a society that did not have written records (although oral histories are extensive). 

I try to imagine what a revelation the Big Island was to the first Hawaiians. The Polynesians may or may not have had a cultural memory of volcanism, but the Marquesas Islands were not one of the active chains where they would have seen volcanoes in action. What did they think of these blasted plains of lava in a place where plants should have been growing? What did they think as they witnessed their first eruptions, and perhaps the destruction of some of their villages? It must have been a profound and terrifying experience.

We reached the end of Chain of Craters Road and had a look at the Holei Sea Arch and the rugged coastline. This was not the stereotypical white sandy beach with surfers and high-rise hotels. It was a violent battleground between ocean waves and volcanic rock. The lava flows destroy human developments, but they also create new lands, providing a balance to the constant destruction brought about by by the raging sea.

The Hawai'i That Was: Pu'u O'o, the Volcano We Couldn't See

The Pu'u O'o cone from above Hilo

Disclaimer: This is NOT happening right now! These pictures are from 2009.

Pu'u O'o is the invisible volcano on the Big Island. It's been the center of eruptive activity for much of the last thirty years, but there are very few easily accessible localities from which it can be seen. One pretty much has to fly over it to see anything at all.

We are continuing a journey to understand the Hawai'i That Was, seeking to understand the islands as they were before European contact, and before Polynesians arrived a thousand years earlier. Understanding the islands requires an understanding of volcanism. The islands exist only because of lava, and in observing active eruptions we see the origins of each of the Hawaiian islands.

Getting closer to the Pu'u O'o cone. Notice the lack of surface flows of lava. It's almost all beneath the surface in lava tubes.

There is a huge unknown involved with every journey to the islands. The volcanoes refuse to follow a schedule, and feel no need to be convenient to the itineraries of visitors. It's true that Kilauea has been erupting continuously now for more than thirty years, so there is a fair chance that the eruption will continue for the foreseeable future. Then again, the eruption could end tomorrow. There's just no way to know. So, one plans for the possibility, but leaves a lot of alternate activities if lavas aren't visible anywhere.

The location of the lava tube system was obvious. Every so often the roof of the tube would collapse, forming a skylight that emitted steam and other gases.

Kilauea is the sole volcano erupting on the island right now, although Mauna Loa is showing a few hints of possible activity. The lavas are exposed at two localities, at Halemaumau in the Kilauea Caldera (see the previous post), and at the cone of Pu'u O'o on the east rift zone about ten miles away. During the many months that we were planning the trip, Pu'u O'o was pretty much just simmering with no active lava flows since 2014, when the town of Pahoa in the Puna District was briefly threatened (damage was thankfully limited).

So we had a hard decision to make: do we bust the budget on a helicopter flight in hopes of seeing lava flows, though there have been none for more than a year, or do we make other arrangements? We opted to make other choices, which was good because we arrived on the islands during a wet spell, and we probably would have seen little through the rain clouds, although a small lava flow started a week before we arrived. It's now three miles long and approaching the coastal pali (look here for a recent video), but we've been home for nearly two weeks. We just plain missed it.

Looking into the crater of Pu'u O'o, source of the lava flows

The situation was different in 2009, the last time we held a class on the islands. Pu'u O'o had been very active for more than a year, with a broad "delta" and lava tube system feeding basalt into the ocean. We opted for the helicopter flight and were richly rewarded. For one reason or another, I've never collected these pictures together in a blog post.

A rootless shield on the Pu'u O'o lava flow.

The first two photos above show the Pu'u O'o cone and crater from a distance. At various times it has been a more prominent cone, but at other times it collapses. Lava left the cone through a series of lava tubes and flowed southeast towards the coast. Sometimes lava would well up through a skylight, forming a small "rootless shield" like the one in the picture above.

I was surprised, almost disappointed by the lack of "rivers" of lava, but our pilot found a recent breakout, and we saw glowing lava and silvery pahoehoe flows that had formed only hours earlier.

Active lava flows on the slopes below Pu'u O'o. This would have been a real spectacle at night.

The silvery reflective appearance was caused by the formation of a thin film of volcanic glass on surface of the flow. The glass breaks off and degrades quickly, leaving behind the more characteristic dull black or dark gray surface.

A skylight over a lava tube.

If you are having trouble visualizing the scale, realize that we never dropped below 500 feet in altitude. The skylight above is probably 30-40 feet across.

Minutes-old breakouts

Our flight continued over the pali (cliff) and onto the coastal plain. Farther from the vent there were more kipukas, islands of forest that were spared from destruction as the lava flowed by. Kipukas are the seed repositories that would eventually cover these flows with new forests.

And then we reached the coast, where the lava emerged from the lava tubes and plunged into the sea. The union of hot lava and cold seawater was explosive. The lava shattered into black sand on contact.

Occasionally we could see lava through breaks in the clouds of steam.

We flew around, but not through the steam cloud. It is a noxious mix of hydrogen sulfide and acids.

As I went through the pictures much later, I found that one of them gave an end-on view of the entire eruption from Pu'u O'o on the right to the ocean entry on the left (below). The distance between is seven miles (11 kms). It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing the forces of creation and destruction at war with each other. We were seeing the continuing birth of the Big Island. Eventually the fires here will die, but a new island will emerge off to the south (it's already got a name: Lo'ihi. Look for it to appear in a few thousand years).

It's not entirely true to say that we never saw Pu'u O'o on the trip a few weeks ago. There is a spot on Highway 11 near Glenwood Road and the Hirano Store where the cone can be seen. During our reconnaissance before the students arrived, we stopped and had a brief look (below). Of course, once the students were with us we tried again, but it was hidden in the rain.

The Pu'u O'o as of this writing has advanced three miles down the upper slopes of the east rift zone and is approaching the coastal pali. If the eruption keeps up, the flow may once again reach the sea, and once again cover the extension of Chain of Craters Road. After the close call of 2014, the road was rebuilt as an emergency escape route for people in the Puna District. Such are the risks of living on an active volcano.

In the next post, we'll see evidence of a conflict between the gods and humans as they settled the island, a conflict that continues today.