I usually don’t go for a big rental car, but to explore the Big Island I knew I’d need something rugged. Car rental companies in Hawaii don’t allow their cars to be driven off of paved roads, though, even if they are four-wheel drive, but knowing me, it was bound to happen. I figured if I didn’t damage the car, no one would have to know, so I went with the Jeep, thinking it would be less likely to bottom out should I happen to get into rocky terrain.
“Okay,” the attendant said, pulling a map from under the counter and setting it down in front of me as I picked up the Jeep, circling the part where it said driving off of paved roads would void the rental contract, then marking it here and there as she continued. “You can drive anywhere on the island except here, and here, and here.”
“The road to the top of Mauna Loa is off limits?” I asked, a little concerned because I had planned to drive it.
“Just this part,” she said, pointing to the last bit. “It’s paved to the visitor center. You just can’t go to the top.”
“No problem,” I said, looking at the areas on the map she hadn’t marked. “It looks like there are plenty of other places to explore.”
Mauna Kea rises 13,803 feet above sea level, which makes it the highest point in the Hawaiian Islands—high enough that it accumulates enough snow for winter skiing. It also has a road leading to the top, making it a popular tourist destination. The catch is, you aren’t allowed to drive a rental car to the top. Not that this stops most people. But I try to follow the rules, so I didn’t try it. I considered hiking up, but the trail from the visitor center is six miles one way, with 4,000 feet of elevation gain, which did not sound like fun. But looking at the map, I noticed another big volcano just a few miles to the south. What about Mauna Loa?
At 13,678 feet elevation, Mauna Loa is Hawaii’s second highest volcano, but it has the distinction of being the tallest mountain on earth as measured from base to peak. (Although higher, Mauna Kea erupted from a vent on the side of the much larger Mauna Loa volcano.) It has a 6.5-mile trail on its north side, leading from the Mauna Loa Observatory to the summit, with only 1,900 feet of elevation gain, a more reasonable day hike, or so it seemed. Thankfully, a road on the north side leads to the Mauna Loa Observatory at 11,161 feet elevation, and as luck would have it, the rental car attendant had not marked that particular road as off-limits. Maybe it was paved all the way to the observatory. Who knew?
I set off early one day and drove up Saddle Road to the broad pass dividing Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, then turned south, following a rugged road through endless lava flows. The road kind of seemed to be paved—either that or they’d scraped the loose lava down to a hard pavement-like crust, close enough—and was marked with the elevation every thousand feet along the way as it climbed slowly to the observatory, where the trail began.
Mauna Loa isn’t a technical climb, just several miles of rugged, high-altitude hiking up steep, indistinct lava slopes, some hard like concrete, some loose like gravel, others sharp like shards of broken glass. I’m a fairly strong climber, and after three hours of mildly unpleasant trudging up the inhospitable slope, I reached summit, where an iridescent piece of volcanic rock glistening in the rarified air caught my eye. I picked it up and admired it. Climbers often take a small rock from the top of a mountain as a souvenir; I myself have dozens of them on a bookshelf at home. This specimen would make a fine addition to my collection, I thought, so I put it in my pocket, and carried it with me on my descent. Bad idea. This was not some lowly mountain back home; this was Mauna Loa, center of the Hawaiian universe, holy territory of the fiercest and most tempestuous of Polynesian gods: the fire goddess Pele.
Back in the day before the first European visitors arrived, it was forbidden for humans to venture anywhere near the summit of Mauna Loa. This may have been for practical reasons, since the volcano was actively erupting for much of the island’s early human history, but also for religious reasons, as Mauna Loa was considered the spiritual home of Pele. Not surprisingly, early attempts to climb the mountain were rebuffed by “impenetrable thickets” low on the mountain. It was not until King Kamehameha I was consulted and agreed to provide guides that a successful was ascent made in 1794 by Scottish botanist Archibald Menzies and his crew. No doubt the Menzies party, as was their wont, collected a few specimens from the summit to deliver back to His Royal Highness. Bad idea. On their descent, Menzes’s party found that their guides had abandoned them; they made it back to camp after dark, only “after the most persevering and hazardous struggle that can possibly be conceived.”
I soon learned what Menzes was talking about. On my way down, before I made it a half mile from the summit, I developed a splitting headache. I stopped and drank the last of my water and immediately puked it up. I soon began to hallucinate; giant cairns of lava rock began to lurch menacingly toward me as I passed. I wobbled precariously across crevasse-like fissures between jagged lava flows that yawned like bottomless voids, threatening to swallow me up. After staggering carefully down miles of faint trail for what seemed like forever, I finally reached the trailhead as darkness fell, had a drink of water from a bottle stashed in the car, and felt slightly better. Still, I knew I was suffering from altitude sickness—high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE) to be exact, an altitude-induced swelling of the brain that can lead to unconsciousness, even death. I started the car and raced down the winding road. I could not get back to sea level fast enough.
Later, while debriefing my harrowing descent over a couple of well-deserved mai tais, it occurred to me that the onset of HACE had coincided with me putting the rock in my pocket. I took the rock out and looked at it inquisitively. I knew about Pele’s curse, but, come on. It must have been my lack of acclimatization, dashing from sea level to nearly 14,000 feet in only a few hours. A lot of hikers suffer from altitude sickness on Mauna Loa for failing to acclimatize (and quite a few get lost and have to be rescued). The smart ones drive to the top of Mauna Kea the day before, or spend the night at the trailhead, to adjust to the high altitude before dashing up Mauna Loa. No mystery there.
Still, while watching the sunset, fingering the rock in my pocket, I couldn’t shake the idea that taking the rock had unleashed Pele’s curse. And so, I walked down the beach and tossed the rock into the surf, returning it to the island landscape, hoping this would mollify the fire goddess. I’d survived the hike without even a scratch on the Jeep. I had more exploring to do. I didn’t want to take any chances.
