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excerpts from
Mauna Kea – Kuahiwi Ku Ha‘o i ka Malie
by Kepa Maly
1778
The Journal of Captain James Cook
December 1, 1778
At 7 PM we were close up with the North side of O'why'he where
we spent the night standing off and on.
Wednesday 2nd. The 2nd in the Morning we were surprised to see
the summits of the highest mountains covered with snow; they did
not appear to be of any extraordinary height and yet in some places
the snow seemed to be of a considerable depth and to have laid
there some time.
Mon. 7
There are hills in this island of a considerable height whose
summits were continually covered with snow [Mauna Kea and Mauna
Loa], so that these people know all the climates from the Torrid
to the Fridgid Zones.
Captain King:
The inland country rises gently at first but afterwards abruptly
to a mountain, which is broken at the top, which must be very
high, since we think we can discern a good deal of Snow upon it,
some say the appearance is only Clouds hanging on the top, &
is also cut into deep Glens.
Cook's officer Clerke:
This isle is one continued Mountain on which are Peaks of various
heights, particularly two of vast elevation which were covered
with snow all the time we were about the neighbourhood; the great
altitude of these snow Peaks was by no means striking to the eye,
I suppose from the vast base they stood upon, for they must have
been of great height as we have seen them very clearly at 26 leagues
distance, and then they appeared very high and prominent.
King noted:
On the NE side is Amacooa [Hamakua] & A-heedoo or O'heeroo
[Hilo], the Snowy mountain which makes in 3 peaks & is called
Mouna Kaa (or Mountain Kaa) separates them.
1823
The Journal of missionary William Ellis (1823)
On approaching the islands, I have more than once observed the
mountains of the interior long before the coast was visible, or
any of the usual indications of land had been seen. On these occasions,
the elevated summit of Mouna Kea, or Mouna Roa, has appeared above
the mass of clouds that usually skirt the horizon, like a stately
pyramid, or the silvered dome of a magnificent temple, distinguished
from the clouds beneath, only by its well-defined outline, unchanging
position, and intensity of brilliancy occasioned by the reflection
of the sun's rays from the surface of the snow.
Reverend Joseph Goodrich ascended to the summit. Ellis reports
that Goodrich reached the snow line and:
...directed his steps towards a neighbouring peak, which appeared
to be one of the highest; but when he had ascended it, he saw
several others still higher. On reaching the summit of this second
peak, he discovered a heap of stones, probably erected by some
former visitor.
1823
The journal of missionary C. S. Stewart (1823-1825)
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Friday, April 25. The appearance of Hawaii, this morning was
exceedingly beautiful. We were within a few miles of the shore;
and the whole of the eastern and northern parts of the island
were distinctly in view, with an atmosphere perfectly clear, and
a sky glowing with the freshness and splendor of sunrise. When
I first went on deck, the gray of the morning still lingered in
the lowlands, imparting to them a grave and somber shade; while
the region behind, rising into broader light, presented its precipices
and forests in all their boldness and verdure. Over the still
loftier heights, one broad mantle of purple was thrown; above
which, the ice cliffs of MOUNA-KEA blazed like fire, from the
strong reflection of the sun-beams striking them long before they
reached us on the waters below.
In the evening Hawaii and Mouna-kea again, at a distance, afforded
another of the sublimest of prospects: — while the setting
sun and rising moon combined in producing the finest effects on
sea and land. The mountains were once more unclouded, and with
a glass we could clearly discern immense bodies of ice and snow
on their summits.
1825
In June 1825, Stewart returned to Hilo with Lord Byron.
The land rose gradually from the cliff, to the distance of ten
or fifteen miles, to a heavy wood encircling the base of Mounakea.
Though in a state of nature, this large district had the appearance
of cultivation, being an open country covered with grass, and
beautifully studded and sprinkled with clumps, and groves, and
single trees, in the manner of park scenery, with a cottage here
and there peeping from beneath the rich foliage.
1830
The New England missionary, Hiram Bingham describes an excursion
with Kauikeaouli (King Kamehameha III), from Waimea, made in 1830.
The Journal of Hiram Bingham
The king set out with a party of more than a hundred, for an
excursion further into the heart of the island, and an ascent
to the summit of Mauna Kea. To watch over and instruct my young
pupil [the King], and to benefit my health, I accompanied him.
The excursion occupied nearly five days...
The next day they passed over the western slope of the mountain
to the southern side, thence eastward along a nearly level plain,
some seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, to a point
south of the summit, and encamped out again, in the mild open
air. In the course of this day's journey, the youthful king on
horse back, pursued, ran down, and caught a yearling bullock,
for amusement and for a luncheon for his attendants.
Having gained an elevation of about ten thousand feet, we halted
and encamped for the night, in the dreary solitude of rocks and
clouds. When the night spread her dark damp mantle over us, we
found ourselves in the chilly autumnal atmosphere of the temperate
zone of this most stupendous Polynesian mountain. Below us towards
Mauna Loa was spread out a sea of dense fog, above which the tops
of the two mountains appeared like islands. We found it a pretty
cold lodging place. Ice was formed in a small stream of water
near us, during the night.
In the morning we proceeded slowly upwards till about noon, when
we came to banks of snow, and a pond of water apparently covered
with ice. In his first contact with a snow bank, the juvenile
king seemed highly delighted. He bounded and tumbled on it, grasped
and handled and hastily examined pieces of it, then ran and offered
a fragment of it in vain to his horse. He assisted in cutting
out blocks of it, which were wrapped up and sent down as curiosities
to the regent and other chiefs, at Waimea, some twenty-eight miles
distant.
After refreshing and amusing ourselves at this cold mountain lake,
we proceeded a little west of north, and some reached the lofty
area which is surmounted by the "seven pillars" which
wisdom had hewed out and based upon it, or the several terminal
peaks near each other, resting on what would otherwise be a somewhat
irregular table land, or plain of some twelve miles circumference.
Ere we had reached the base of the highest peak, the sun was fast
declining and the atmosphere growing cold.
The king and nearly all the company declined to attempt to scale
the summit, and passing on to the north-west crossed over, not
at the highest point, and hastily descended towards Waimea. John
Phelps Kalaaulana, who had been in New England, the only native
in the company who seemed inclined to brave the cold and undertake
the labor of reaching the top, accompanied me, and we climbed
to the summit of the loftiest peak. Our progress was slow and
difficult, by a zigzag and winding course. On gaining the lofty
apex, our position was an awful solitude, about 14,500 feet above
the level of the sea, where no animal or vegetable life was found.
No rustling leaf, or chirping bird, or living tenant of the place
attracted the eye or ear.
1857
Charles De Varigny, Secretary of the French Consulate, made at
least two trips to Mauna Kea. On November 18, 1857, upon reaching
the 7,000 foot elevation, he reported:
Letters of Charles De Varigny
Here the atmosphere of these uplands plateaus has an exceptional
power to carry the sound of the human voice, making ordinary tones
audible a mile away. But there are no traces of inhabitants. Only
some great wild cattle trouble the silence of these solitudes
when during their wanderings a dead branch is broken. Halemakule
[the native guide] was struck by the unfortunate idea of testing
the effects of his Hawaiian chanting as it reverberated among
the mountain echoes. Still one more point on which we failed to
agree. We preferred the song of the native birds to his slow,
monotonous melopoeia.
De Varigny later wrote about arrangements for a trip to the
summit. The following excerpts from De Varigny's narratives describe
the journey, and offer an explanation of the depletion of nene population
and high numbers of introduced feral animals that roamed the mountain:
At five o'clock in the evening we reached Kalaieha, where we
were planning to camp. Kalaieha is neither a town, nor a village,
nor even a huddled corral of grass huts. It is an immense plain
which sprawls between two mountains. At certain periods of the
year, especially in July and August the plain abounds in wild
geese attracted by the ohelo, small red berries with a rather
insipid flavor. The shrub bearing this fruit is more plentiful
at Kalaieha than anywhere else. More over, during the period of
our excursion, sportsmen and amateur hunters looking for game
pay frequent visits to Kalaieha for the pleasure of shooting.
Unfortunately, the wild geese begin to spoil very quickly and
cannot stand being shipped to Honolulu. The plain was entirely
deserted and the bushes were stripped of their fruits. In compensation,
though the geese were missing, the wild bullocks, boars, and stray
dogs who had reverted to a state of nature were presence [SIC]
in hoards. The place swarmed with wild boars.
As we continued to climb, the trees became more scarce, more
thin and stunted, until finally they ceased altogether. Bushes
took their place, at first vigorous and close-growing, later puny
and sparse. The ground was carpeted with strawberry plants covered
with their fruit, which our horses crushed at every step, sending
up a perfume that reminded us of Europe. Grass became rare and
short. After it appeared the Ranunculi [Ranunculus hawaiensis,
the native buttercup, makou]. Our horses sank down in to the cindery
soil or stumbled upon small stones that rolled under and behind
them. We climbed and continued to climb. At 10,000 feet we began
to note the first tufts of Ensis argentea [`ahinahina, the silversword
(Argyroxiphium sandwicensis)], a last but marvelously hardy vestige
of plant life. This spectacular creature which I have never observed
elsewhere on the high mountain tops of Hawaii, is a veritable
miracle. Clinging to the ground by its very deep roots, in form
it resembles the aloes. Its sword-shape leaves are whitish gray,
covered with light down. They glitter brilliantly as they catch
the rays of the sun. From the center rises a stalk reaching as
much as ten feet high, which bears a silky plume similar to that
of sugar cane during its blossoming period.
At last we sight snow. The summit seems to retreat before us,
to escape all our efforts. But we are climbing, always climbing,
and snowfield follows upon snowfield. At last we reach the final
plateau. The glare of the sun reflected on that great white expanse
dazzles us. The solitude and silence — how deathlike everything
is! No sound is heard, no living creature stirs.
1873
In 1873, Isabella Bird visited the Hawaiian Islands. Sailing
into Hilo Bay from North Hilo she observed:
The Journal of Isabella Bird
There was a magnificent coast-line of gray cliffs many hundred
feet in height, usually draped with green. Into cracks and caverns
the heavy waves surged with a sound like artillery, sending their
broad white sheets of foam high up among the ferns and trailers.
Cascades in numbers took one impulsive leap from the cliffs to
the sea, or came thundering down clefts or "gulches"
which, widening at their extremities, opened on smooth green lawns,
each one of which had its grass house or houses, kalo patch, bananas,
and coco palms. Above the cliffs there were grassy uplands with
park-like clumps of the screw-pine, and candle nut, and glades
and dells of dazzling green...opening up among the dark dense
forests which for some thousands of feet girdle Mauna Kea and
Mauna Loa, two vast volcanic mountains, whose snow-capped summits
gleamed here and there above the clouds, at an altitude of nearly
14,000 feet.
After approaching Hilo, from along the Hamakua-Hilo Pali-ku
coast line, Bird recorded that:
So dense is the wood that Hilo is rather suggested than seen.
From the sea it looks one dense mass of greenery, in which the
bright foliage of the candle-nut relieves the glossy dark green
of the breadfruit — a maze of preposterous bananas, out
of which rise slender annulated trunks of palms giving their infinite
grace to the grove. Above Hilo, broad lands sweeping up cloudwards,
with their sugar cane, kalo, melons, pine-apples, and banana groves
suggest the boundless liberality of Nature. Woods and waters,
hills and valley are all there, and from the region of an endless
summer the eye takes in the domain of an endless winter, where
almost perpetual snow crowns the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna
Loa.
1892
"The Ascent of Mauna Kea, Hawaii"
W. D. Alexander
The trail next turned to the east, winding around an immense
sand crater called "Keonehehee," 11,500 feet in elevation,
which stands on the edge of the summit plateau. Further to the
southeast we were shown a pillar of stones which was raised to
commemorate Queen Emma's journey over the mountain to Waimea in
1883.
~excerpts from Mauna Kea – Kuahiwi Ku Ha‘o
i ka Malie
A Report on Archival and Historical Documentary Research
Ahupua‘a of Humu‘ula, Ka‘ohe, districts of Hilo
and Hamakua, Island of Hawai‘i
by Kepa Maly
©1997 Kepa Maly, Kumu Pono Associates and Native Lands Institute
1911
Writing in the November 1911 issue of Mid-Pacific magazine,
Alonzo Gartley reported on a horseback expedition to the summit,
guided by renowned cowboy Eben Low.
Mauna Kea is the highest island peak in the world. It rises so
gently from the ocean side that, although its base is in the tropics
and its crest in the snows, it seems but a gentle slope of no
great altitude, yet a plumb line dropped from the summit of Mauna
Kea to the sea level would have to be nearly three miles in length.
It might be possible for a good horseman to ride in a day from
the seaside to the summit.
Gartley described the fog which can cause the wanderer to lose
his way, for there is no regular trail, and the wild cattle, which
would sometimes charge at people.
Emerging from above the cloud layer, he tipped his hat to the
spirits of those who worked the adze quarry.
It is not many centuries ago that these men of Hawaii were at
the stage that our own forbears reached and passed ten thousand
years ago.
Reaching the summit, he described a steep double cone of red
cinders. Both horse and rider were beginning to feel the great elevation.
We looked down upon a field of snow, but we found, upon approach,
that it was caked hard — a frozen mass of glacial snow.
It was difficult to break off bits to eat from the hard points
into which the winds and the sun had shaped it, but how good it
was!
At the summit, his party found a can with the names of those
who had made the ascent in earlier years and they formed the Mauna
Kea Association, Limited, whose sole purpose was to erect a monument
to those who had made the climb.
On the descent,
Afterwards, we had the coldest drink I have ever taken in these
islands, from a mountain spring at an elevation of 10,500 feet
that is probably seepage from the Crater Lake.
Mid-Pacific magazine
November 1911
1922
Lake Waiau was a sheltered place
to camp for those who chose to stay overnight on the mountain, as
reported by Lawrence Hite Daingerfield in an article for Paradise
of the Pacific.
We pitched our tent hurriedly by the green, cold lake, built
a fire in the whipping trade wind, with its chilly bite, ate an
early supper, and retired like packed sardines between our blankets.
We were in an Arctic zone under a tropic sky. Taking our last
look across the lake, we saw the image of fair Venus, streaming
in white and shimmering light across the tiny, rippling waves.
A thousand jewels glittered in the reflected phantom light of
our neighbor planet.
The next morning, ice over a half-inch was found in the gravel
bar about the lake. Above us, just a little way, snow banks lay,
chilled and white and permanent. Reaching the summit, at 13,825
feet, we found great drifts of frozen whiteness, two hundred yards
or more in length and thirty or more in width. Here we indulged
in Mauna Kea pie, composed of frozen cakes of snow and chocolate
bars.
On Arctic Peaks 'Neath Tropic Skies
Afoot Over Mounts Hualalai, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on Hawaii's
Largest Isle
by Lawrence Hite Daingerfield
Paradise of the Pacific
December 1922
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