We have been having a lot of wind and rain in the past few weeks and after a particularly large storm crossed the islands a couple days ago, we have snow on the mountain!
In order to take this picture I had to turn south off of the Saddle Road at the small cinder cone in the bottom right of this picture and go about 1/3 of the way up Mauna Loa. You can see a couple cars on the road to the left of the hill. This road starts out nice enough; one lane, lots of twisties, multiple blind corners with certain death/injury, man eating lava and invisible oncoming cars at every turn... you know: FUN!
Further up, the vegetation and pavement fade away, leading to a totally surreal lava landscape. The whole top 1/2 of this mountain is solid rock, no trees. This road goes all the way to the top at around 13900', but I didn't have extra water or time to attempt the whole road.
The view back across to Mauna Kea in the North from 9000' was quite spectacular.
It was such a nice day, I continued on down through Hilo and into the Puna district. I wanted to take some more pictures of the "tree tunnel" and other interesting things along the way. Entering the tree tunnel
This area, known as Red Road, winds along the coast down to what remains of Kalapana. Actually quite a nice twisty road with a bit of an ocean breeze.
...and finally back up the mountain through the old town of Pahoa.
Hope you enjoyed these!
