Days 4 & 5: Haleakala National Park

We got to a late start heading out to Haleakala National Park.  It was just like being back home, with the gang, getting off to a start 2 hours later than planned.  Though, I hear that we are not the only ones bad at getting an early start, Mike & Kristin...

Haleakala National Park is located on top of Haleakala, a volcano that has most likely seen the last of its erupting days.  You can drive close to the top of the mountain at which point it is 10,000 feet but we didn't go that high.  Instead we only drove up to the parking lot at the head of the trail to our campsite, which was at 8,000 feet.  They warned us of potential altitude sickness and so we started feeling not to well as we headed up the mountain - chalk it up to psychosomatism or lack of food because once we ate a little something at the trailhead everything was fine.  As you will see from the pictures, the parking lot gave a good view of the top of the clouds, so, I assume we were pretty high up...

We were told to prepare for winter conditions by books, internet and the people at the information center.  So, I brought a lot of stuff to Hawaii.  I went and bought a stove (MSR Whisperlight: hummed and hawed about how I would get it onto the plane, whether it would get taken away, etc, but it turned out that as long as there are no odours - which white gas does not leave any trace of, at least with our noses - plus they didn't really seem to check) so we could have hot water and cook a hot meal.  They collect rain water at the campsites so I needed to bring my water filter, brought a winter sleeping bag, warm clothes, a tent of course, etc.  This all led to pretty heavy backpacks.  It was pretty chilly up there but we probably could have survived with out my big and bulky down sleeping bag and less warm clothes, but you never know.

As we started on the trailhead, the clouds were moving up the slopes and we were heading down them.  This meant that the whole way down we hiked through clouds.  This also meant that we had no idea of how far we were hiking because we could only see a few meters ahead of us.  Each time we pivoted to change direction onto another switchback, we didn't know how far up we were and where the crater floor was.  We had no marker on the horizon to see progress.  The endless switchbacks combined with the heavy packs, started to wear on us a little bit even though I had my GPS with me (I did reset it what I assumed was 1km into the hike, so there was still guessing).

The clouds were still there at the campsite and it took us a while to find where the tent site was.  We were a bit depressed that we were going to be spending our time in the crater enshrouded in clouds.  Being that high up and away from any significant light pollution, the starscape was to be astounding.  So, we hoped that the clouds would clear away and set up the tent, cooked and ate while surrounded by hazy whiteness.

After we finished our dinner and had our tea we went into our tent to hang out.  Wishing to avoid the inevitability of getting up during the night to go to the bathroom, well, uhm, pit toilet (that allowed turning around only with the door open), we stepped out of the tent and lo and behold! the clouds were gone.  The night sky was littered stars, so many that I could barely recognize - at first - the constellations that I knew.  It was like trying to find Waldo...  One nightly object did stick out like a sore thumb.  Normally, when I look up at the night sky and I see a blazing point of light, I know that it is Venus.  Jupiter is a close second but does not come close to comparing to Venus.  It was neither of these two that stuck out of the night sky though.  What I saw was not necessarily brighter than anything else in the sky, but, it was orangish-red.  Very red.  In the cities, or even the country near the cities, you can vaguely tell that Mars is red.  Even out at Jenn's cottage it is only vaguely red.  I saw it through my telescope in high school and we probably looked at Mars at the University of Lethbridge telescope.  But up on the crater, it was fantastic; very clearly red.  I don't know if it would amaze many people, but it amazed me!  The Milky Way was heavy in the sky too, a clear view of our galaxy.

I was satisfied and elated and we went to bed.  As soon as night had fell, the birds too went to sleep.  Unfortunately these birds talked in their sleep all night...  The birds, Chukars - a type of partridge, that you see in the slideshow, those are the ones who made all the racket.  They weren't terribly noisy but a definite consistent accompaniment throughout the night.  I got up before the sunrise.  I walked out amongst the lava rocks to find a nice spot to take pictures.  After looking around a little, hearing the Chukars again, they were everywhere.  I read a Wikipedia entry that said that hunters treasured these birds because they were hard to catch - true, they lived in some difficult territory but these ones would get within meters of me.

The sunrise was pretty spectacular.  The clouds were not at the craters level but you can see them surrounding the crater.  I stood at my spot for a while, taking pictures of various land forms as the sunlight revealed their different aspects.  It was great to be able to see where we actually came from and just from how high we had to descend the crater rim to get to our campsite.  Also looking around you could see a couple of the cinder cones caused by the various eruptions.  I guess NASA sent astronauts up here to practice for being on our actual Moon.  The landscape reminded me of some areas in Utah and Idaho (oddly enough named Craters of the Moon) with all of the porous rock strewn about the landscape and shrubs clinging to the rocks.  You can see lava tubes from where lava would stream and caves.  We never found any large caves on Haleakala, just one behind the cabin where we stayed and another small one that I climbed down to.

Throughout the morning the clouds started to creep up.  I thought that our clear skies would disappear once, but the clouds were beaten back - maybe by the heat from the black lands warmed by the morning sun.  Taking that as an omen, we started packing up and headed out.  The skies remained clear as we moved through the floor of the crater and for a small time as we moved up the rim.  As you will see from the pictures, the clouds eventually caught up to us and we resumed our slog up the many switchbacks up the crater rim to the parking lot.  It was much longer, psychologically, on the way back...

Before we left I filtered some water from a bathtub with some red scum on the bottom.  Couldn't tell whether it was from the red rocks around or some sort of algal growth.  Either way, trusted my filter would work.  The water was very good (after filtering) - better than the chlorine filled water we brought from our cottage and the plasticky tasting water from out dromedary bag.  We didn't get sick either, which means that my water filter has yet to fail me. (Do those of you remember the slough at Yamnuska Meadows?  I guess that was the ultimate test of the water filter...)

We survived the trek out and then drove out of the clouds down the volcano and back to ocean...

Slideshow:



ps. Thanks to Marko Polo and Excido for stealing their ideas: HD Youtube videos...if anyone has any problems with the videos let me know and I'll change a setting.  Sadly, I need to go do some work so I'm ready for work on Monday...