Day 9 - Top of the World

I was 7 when I decided I wanted to go to Mauna Kea. I saw the place on an old TV show called Arthur C Clarkes Mysterious World, whch was about all the odd things like the Yeti, UFOs and all that sort of stuff that fascinates a young mind. This particular show was about this huge mountain that was quickly becoming home to all sort of neat telescopes, staring out and exploring the universe.

I mentioned the elevation at Volcano, 4000 feet above sea level. To get to the top of Mauna Kea, you must take the Saddle Road - a thin strip of tarmac that crosses the Big Island from East to North West, between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

(Digression - Measured from its base, Mauna Loa is the tallest mountain on the planet. A total of about 32,000 feet tall (3,000 more than Everest) but with two-thirds of its massive bulk underwater. Mauna Loa is also still an active volcano, yet the sheer size of the thing means it is actually getting lower, collapsing under its own weight.)

The Saddle Road and the trip to the observatories was the reason we hired a 4WD. Only one car rental company allows its vehicles up the Saddle Road and off to the summit. In fact, most rental companies specifically ban the use of their cars on that road.

It is a 26 mile drive from Hilo to the observatory turnoff and to be honest, I couldn't see the need for a 4WD. Although the road continuously climbs to 6,600 feet, it was no more challenging than a drive through the Lake District. We kept up a speed of about 40mph, until hitting mile marker 19, where the road was undergoing nearly 20 miles of resurfacing and realignment. Even though it was unpaved, even then I would have been quite happy to put my little Skoda on the road.

Upon reaching the highest point of the Saddle Road, time to turn off. People are advised to make a stop en route, at the Ellison Onizuka Visitor Information Station. Six miles from the Saddle Road, but crucially, 9,000 feet elevation. So by the time you reach the VIS, you are two Ben Nevis' above sea level.

The VIS, named after a Hawaii astronaut who died in the Challenger disaster, is a stopoff for star gazing, information about Mauna Kea itself, a rest halt and a starting point for Summit Tours. Although it is possible to drive to the summit yourself, each day there is an organised Summit Tour, where an astronomer shows you a film about Mauna Kea and then a couple of Park Rangers lead a convoy to the summit.

The film is about an hour long and has a strong emphasis on the importance of Mauna Kea to the Hawaiians. Effectively, it is the Mount Olympus of their culture, the home of the Gods. There has been, and continues to be, much conflict between the Hawaiians and the astronomers - the latter have found the perfect place on the entire planet to peer out into the skies.

This is because of a combination of factors. The summit is easily accessible and there is very little light pollution from below. It is above a tropical inversion layer, above the clouds which means very little interference from the weather for 300 or so days each year. The islands position on the planet affords a great view of 70% of the sky.

There is a second reason for the film - it forces your body to acclimatise to the height. The VIS is at 9,000 feet but the summit is a further 6 miles and 4,700 feet, another Ben Nevis worth. At the full height of 13,776 feet, there is 40% less oxygen in the air than you are used to. At that height, your body is effectively starved of oxygen and water - technically, you are dying very slowly. It has some... interesting effects.

After watching the film and picking up some bits and pieces at the shop, it was time to join the convoy to the summit. The journey took about 25 minutes and yes, you do need a 4x4 to get to the top. Nt because the road is tricky - it is mostly gravel all the way - but mainly because at the altitude, a 4WD generally has an engine with enough grunt to make it up the steep inclines.

Caroline and I are travellers, we aren't tourists. There is a difference. Travellers, when faced with something like Mauna Kea, do their research. They find out about the restriction on hire cars, they realise that at 14,000 feet, it might be a bit nippy and plan accordingly.

Tourists take any old car to the VIS. They arrive in sandals and shorts. They grumble and then spend lots of money in the shop buying warm clothing. They grumble about having to sit through the film. They have to cadge a lift to the summit because their hire car is banned and uninsured anyway.

In this case, the tourist was from the UK and really, really pissed me off.

Anyway, unlike people who travel up on their own, as part of an organised tour by the park, we were allowed into the W.M Keck Observatory, the newest of the telescopes at the summit. The technology involved in all of the telescopes was quite mind boggling in places - some of them have mirrors almost 10 metres wide, but the Keck 'scopes (for there are two identical setups) are a group of hexagons, about 1 metre each which fit together to form one big mirror. The advantage to this is that if there is an imperfection then you don't have to fix the entire thing, you just remove a panel and replace it. A second benefit that even on an object so comparatively small, gravity bends the mirrors slightly, and the computers can adjust the segments twice a second.

Mind boggling number time. The mirrors are so perfectly smooth that if they were the size of the Earth, then the largest bump would be just two feet high. We're talking molecules of height imperfection. The mirror arrangement weighs 270 tons, yet is so perfectly balanced that if the drive motors were switched off, you could move the whole assembly around with just one hand.

I mentioned the side effects of the altitude - the summit isn't an easy place to be. The temperature is about freezing both outside and inside the domes (the air temperature is matched to reduce turbulence in front of the mirrors). The lack of oxygen makes you feel slightly woozy. You yawn a lot and are advised to bend your knees - you may suddenly keel over. Simple memory is difficult - our tour guide introduced himself as Don, when he was actually called Josh. Don was the Park Ranger in charge of the group, when asked how the astronomers coped with up to 14 hour shifts overnight, he simply said "natural selection - either you can handle it, or you can't. And you never know until you try."

Caroline was pretty badly affected by the altitude. I took some time, was pretty uncomfortable for about 15 minutes and then got my bearings a bit. Combined with this and the cloud rolling over the summit meant we weren't going to hang around for the sunset. Usually the sunset is pretty spectacular, with the clouds a thousand feet below you and only the stars above - my luck wasn't in, this was going to be a cloudy night. So we walked around the outside of the domes and had a look around.

Next to the Keck Observatory is the Subaru telescope. There is a very odd thing about this scope - I mentioned air turbulence before. The movement of air makes visibility quite difficult, it is moving air that makes stars twinkle when you look at them. Obviously when you are peering through the universe, this local blurring can be a problem. The computers recalibrate the images thousands of times per second to compensate. The way Subaru does this is to send an audible sonar whistle through the air - standing next to it you keep hearing pulses of beeps going up and down the scales. The computers measure the pulses and calculate the adjustments. A very neat solution to the problem but very eerie to stand there and listen to.

We began the journey back down while the light was half decent, stopping for Caroline to take photos which will hopefully turn out OK. The geology of Mauna Kea is as impressive as the science at the top - lots of snow tipped volcanic cinder cones, lava flows and odd plateaus. You can understand why NASA trained its astronauts for moon landings in such a landscape.

Night fell quickly as we hit the Saddle Road. A final number for you. On the journey down, admittedly in a big heavy 4x4, I decided to just use momentum and the brakes to keep the car going. It was a sort of game I occasionally do to keep myself alert on a tricky road - how far can you get without needing to accelerate.

From the start point to when I finally had to press the gas pedal to accelerate away from a set of traffic lights was eighteen miles.