Haleakala

Maui has a mountain that is taller than Mt. Everest. At only a titch over 10,000 feet it doesn’t reach as high into the sky, but measuring from its base adds another 19,000 feet and just enough to make it slightly taller than Everest. You can drive to the top of Haleakala, something you can’t do at Everest.

Small visitor center at the top

The drive is not difficult, but you do climb the full 10,000 feet negotiating many, many switchbacks. The road is well-maintained and doesn’t include any spots where you feel like you might slip over the edge as you do along many high mountain and seaside roads. As we drove up we remembered several switchbacks in Norway as we climbed or descended in and out of the fjords. The edges of the fjords are much steeper than the gradual sloping sides of Haleakala.

We chose an almost perfect day for our climb. Clouds were minimal with almost no wind. We were treated to some great views of Maui and its neighboring islands of Moloka’i and Lana’i as we climbed. Clouds did obscure the view of the Big Island when we reached the top and were moving through the crater obscuring our crater views somewhat, but we were thankful for the great views we did get.

The drive to the top for us was 65 miles. The first 40 is fairly flat before the climb begins up the mountainside and we begin our first series of switchbacks. This set of switchbacks winds through lush greenery and several probably expensive homes. The road straightens out for a few miles as the landscape changes  above the tree line.

We made our first stop at Hosmer Grove Campground to hike a short nature trail through the last of the forest and we might be able to see a few of Maui’s endemic native birds. There aren’t many places on Maui to see these birds as most of their preferred habitat is difficult to enter even on a day hike. Much of their habitat is totally off-limits. Even with this protection, these birds are in great danger of extinction as so much of their habitat has been lost and the danger from invasive species grows as the climate warms. Rats and mongoose are one problem that doesn’t go away, but the climate threat is that disease-bearing mosquitoes are expanding up the cool mountains as those mountains become warmer.

We managed to see four i’iwi, an Hawaiian Honeycreeper. These beautiful red and black birds have a long curved beak specially designed to reach all the way inside some of the long flowers also endemic to Hawaii. The only other birds we saw on this stop were some House Sparrows which seem to be everywhere and a Pacific Golden Plover seen all over this island. They have come here from Alaska. We stopped here on the way back down the mountain in the afternoon and were luckier as we saw a pair of Nenes, the Hawaiian goose and a Maui Alauahio, a creeper endemic to Maui. 

One of the truly fascinating things about Hawaiian birds is how the one original honeycreepers that did manage to find its way to the middle of the ocean evolved into a wide variety of different honeycreepers as they adapted to the island environments. As they evolved, they filled niches filled by different birds on other continents. One of these, the ‘Akiapola’au, can move its curved upper bill out of the way so its straight lower bill can emulate a woodpecker and drill holes into a tree. The ‘Aki can use its bills this way because the lower bill is attached to the skull via a connecting bone instead of directly like mammal jaws that connect directly to the skull.  Another whose name I don’t remember coevolved with a high mountain plant so specifically that it and the plant are completely co-dependent. The plant requires the bird for pollination and the bird requires the plant for its food. Each has left itself without an alternative. 

After our stop at Hosmer and a visit to the lower visitor center, we continued up the mountain for another another 11 miles of switchbacks. Even without stopping this part of the drive took almost 30 minutes. At the very top of Haleakala is an observation hut offering views of all Maui’s neighboring islands and the crater. Clouds obscured the Big Island and much of the crater, but what we could see was spectacular. Another amazing Hawaiian bird, the Hawaiian Petrel, nests here at the summit by digging out a short tunnel into the lava. These seabirds forage at sea during the day and return at night to feed their chicks. When not burdened by raising children, they fly as far as Alaska on their feeding trips. 

The summit is also home to an observatory and space monitoring equipment. It claims to be the third best site in the world to view the skies. Not sure what the top two are, but a couple of guesses would be the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Australian Outback. They are among several spots on earth that have been designated as dark sky parks by the International Dark-Sky Association. We made a daytime visit to another dark sky park on the South Island of New Zealand. Something more for future visits.

The geologic history of Haleakala is an old one. The mountain is a shield volcano which means the lava pumps up from the earth and flows down the sides of the mountain. Unlike more spectacular volcanoes, there is no violent eruption like we experienced with Mt. St. Helens. The last of the eruptions here was in the 1700s and it has erupted ten times in the last 1000 years, but the mountain has been eroding away over the last several million years creating what is called the crater. At one point the mountain was probably about 15,000 feet above sea level, but since then the top has eroded away leaving the valley behind that looks like a crater. Inside that crater are 14 pu’u of cinder cones, the result of smaller eruptions. The valley crater is huge, as much as 2.5 miles wide and 3000 feet deep. Amazingly, Haleakala has risen almost three inches in recent years. Geologists are not sure, but think that this is a result of current eruptions on the Big Island. As the new lava has added weight to the Big Island it has actually sunk pushing Haleakala upwards. 

We ended our trip to Haleakala with a stop at the first restaurant we saw after leaving the park. It turned out to be a gem with great food overlooking the valley below and a lovely garden filled with a variety of flowers. We timed our stop perfectly to get one of the best window seats where we could linger over our late brunch before finishing the drive back to our condo north of Ka’anapali.