In the House of the Sun

No, that title's not a reference to "a house in New Orleans"!

My final stop of my tour before heading for home is the last of the 4 major Hawaiian Islands, Maui.  Known colloquially as "the Valley Isle", Maui is really two islands joined together in the middle.  The smaller West Maui is also much older.  Its original shield volcano has long since been carved up and worn down into multiple smaller peaks and valleys -- hence the island's nickname.

East Maui, where I am staying, is far larger and consists of one single huge volcano which nearly rivals Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in size: Haleakala.  The Hawaiian name means "House of the Sun", and as soon as you get here and see the layout of the island you can easily tell why.  To all the residents of West Maui, and of the central lowland, sunrise occurs every morning over the immense shield of Haleakala -- apparently out of the mountain.  Haleakala has been dormant for several centuries, and it seems likely now that it will stay that way.  But Madame Pele can be capricious, so it doesn't do to completely write off this sleeping monster either.

It's also famous as a spot to watch the sunrise, since there is a good paved road all the way to the summit of the mountain.  I did a tour up there last time I was in Maui, back in 1998.  I was picked up at my hotel at 3:30 am, and taken to a central depot where I was fitted out with appropriate clothing and a bicycle.  Then our party was driven to the top of the mountain, arriving around 5:30 am.  After about half an hour of waiting, we watched the sun rise over the immense summit depression which slopes downwards to the east, and contains numerous cinder and spatter cones from previous eruptions.  The various bike parties then drew lots and we were the second-last to start down.  It took us about 4 hours to coast all the way back to sea level (including a breakfast stop at the midpoint), and in that whole time we only had to pedal once, for about 300 metres, after crossing a low bridge over a stream.  The rest of the way it was all about using the handbrakes.

Sadly, the National Park suspended all bike tours within the park in 2007 due to a number of accidents.  The bike tours now start halfway down the mountain, outside the park boundaries.  That's a great pity.  But even without the bicycle component, sunrise on Haleakala is a phenomenal experience, and I highly recommend it.  Just be sure to wear warm clothing.  The temperature at the summit in the early morning in 1998 was 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 1 degree Celsius) before sunrise!  Yesterday I waited till after breakfast to drive up (yes, I am getting slack in my old age!).  Even with the brilliant sunshine, the temperature couldn't break 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) and the wind chill pushed it a lot lower than that.  But it was well worth it!

You also have to be prepared to feel a little light-headed.  Walking around at this altitude takes some getting used to, since you are (at just over 10,000 feet altitude above sea level) almost 2 miles up (close to 3 kilometres) and the air contains much less oxygen.  Be ready to take it slow and easy for a while until you acclimatize.

The 26-mile mountain road has plenty of twists and turns, and once you are into the park there are no shoulders or guardrails.  Drivers who are at all nervous had far better park the car and ride up in a bus.  I've been nervous driving up mountains on roads like this before, but I think I wasn't this time simply because I had already biked down the road so it was like an old familiar friend!  Coming down wasn't scary, either, as I've long since mastered the trick of using the low gears and letting the car's engine control the descent.  

Anyway, here are some pictures of what you see at the top:

Although this looks like a gigantic volcanic crater, it actually isn't.  The summit of the mountain (originally much taller) has been eroded away over many millennia by wind and weather, and a lot of the material has washed out through the two big gaps that have formed on the south and southeast sides.  For that reason, experts refer to this as the summit "depression" since it is strictly neither a crater nor a caldera.  The cones from more recent eruptions are the actual volcanic features here, apart from the mountain as a whole.  In addition to the three lookout points reached by road, there are two hiking trails leading down into the depression.

I also had to throw in a picture of this guy, just for the benefit of any skeptics who wondered whether he really was there or not!

When you look off to the right (southeast) across the mountain's ramparts you see an amazing panorama of four of the major volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii, well over 100 miles away.  I tagged them on this pic to help you identify them.  The hyperactive Kilauea is hidden behind the much taller Mauna Loa.

To the west you see the mountains of West Maui.  From ground level they look pretty impressive, but from this height they appear as attractive hills by comparison to Haleakala.  These mountains, too, are the eroded remains of a single shield volcano (that volcano goes by the Hawaiian name Halemahina, "House of the Moon").

Here's a video clip with the panorama of the observatory complex and the West Maui mountains.

The summit of Haleakala has one other amazing sight to offer: a rare plant, so rare in fact that this particular variety grows nowhere else on earth except on this one mountain top.  It's called the silversword.  It's an endangered species because of its slow growth rate.  One plant takes anything up to 50 years to mature (this is a sub-arctic tundra environment up here).  It then flowers once and dies.  The last time I came, we actually got to see one in bloom, which was amazing.  They have a much bigger collection in this protected silversword garden now.  The plant in the second pic is dying.  The tall stalk is the shrivelled remains of the cluster of blooms.

As with the Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island, I feel that Haleakala is a place that should be on everybody's bucket list.  An extraordinary sight in itself, this majestic mountain also removes you far above and away from the relentless hurry-hurry of modern life.  It's a great place to just turn off the cellphone and savour the view, breathe the crisp cool air, feel the strength of the wind, and listen to the sounds of silence in the House of the Sun.