After several tries, I've come to the regretful conclusion that it's simply impossible to replicate the colors seen in the sunsets up here in a photo. They're just so incredibly breathtaking in the range of hues.
That being said, this picture comes pretty decently close. (This is the view from just outside our break room.)
May 1st we had a snowfall on the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. This is pretty late in the season for snow, though it's possible to get snow any time of the year here; I still remember the time it snowed all the way down to the Visitor Center while I was working there—in June! (This snow doesn't extend that far down.) At a little over 11,000 feet (~3,350 meters) our site was too low to get any snow, though.
I like how the snow here is mostly only in one sector, not equally spread around the summit.
A few days later, on May 5th, the snow had all melted, but the focus is this old eruptive vent near the road—we stopped on the way down after some daytime observations. This is maybe fifty feet from the road, and perhaps twenty feet deep. I couldn't get a good picture of the inside because it's so large, perhaps thirty feet across.
I don't know how old it is—based on the weathering I'd guess somewhere within the past few hundred years—but it's incredible to imagine when this fissure was belching molten rock and gasses from the interior of the earth.
There are also several lava tubes visible beside the road up to the site. This is the largest and most visible, though it doesn't go anywhere on either side beyond where it collapsed here. You can see where the road goes maybe twenty feet beyond the far end. This is not the gaping hole closest to the road—just above the 9,000 foot marker is the opening to a small lava tube literally within two feet of the side of the road, though I forgot to take a picture of it. I'm hoping to take a weekend soon to explore some of these lava tubes, so hopefully I'll have more pictures soon. A hui hou!
Not many get to work in a place with a view like this! Photos are very welcome, thanks. :)
ReplyDeleteSometimes I hear about people in cool, non-standard jobs in exotic locales and wonder about the chain of events that led them there, and now I realize *I* basically have such a job. Funny how life works sometimes!
DeleteGlad you like the pictures. :) I should probably just retitle this blog "The Thousand Faces of Mauna Kea" and be done with it already. :D