World’s Tallest Mountain Features Rare Species and Astronomical Observatories
Just a few hours drive from Gourmet Kona Coffee Country and Kailua-Kona is the summit of the highest mountain in all of the Hawaiian Islands, Mauna Kea - or White Mountain.
Towering 13,796 feet above sea level, Mauna Kea is also the highest place in all of the Pacific basin - it is Mauna Kea Volcano.
Even more surprising is the fact that if you measure Mauna Kea Volcano from its true base which sits deep in the ocean, the volcano measures more than 6 miles from its base to its summit. This makes Mauna Kea the tallest mountain on Earth!
And by the way, it is not an extinct volcano. Mauna Kea is considered dormant but not extinct, means it still has the potential to erupt.
The last time Mauna Kea erupted was about 4,000 years ago, and it created some of the cinder cones that you can now see near the summit of this massive mountain.
Mauna Kea’s summit also supports some very rare Hawaiian plants and insects. One of the most remarkable is the tiny wekiu bug. Wekiu means “summit,” and that is where it is found. The wekiu doesn’t have any wings, but it is a predator, feeding on other insects that are blown upslope on the volcano from lower elevations.
The wekiu has an antifreeze-like substance in its blood so it can live atop Mauna Kea where temperatures are often below freezing - when there is lots of snow there are lots of wekiu. The dark color of the weikiu also helps it absorb heat.
When the wekiu bug catches its prey it first injects it with its own unique digestive enzymes to prepare the meal.
In ancient times Mauna Kea was considered a very sacred Hawaiian cultural site, as it still is today. Religious shrines still exist atop the volcano and there are also burial sites and petroglyphs carved into rocks.
The summit area also has very unique basaltic rocks that were prized for making adzes which Hawaiians used to carve the wood of huge koa trees into canoes. The adze quarry atop Mauna Kea is said to be the largest in all of Polynesia. One of the highest lakes on Earth is also located just below the peak of the mountain - it is called Lake Waiau which means Swirling Water.
The temperature at Mauna Kea’s summit is about 60º Fahrenheit in summer as well as spring, but when winter arrives the whole area is usually covered in snow. Usually more than five times annually the summit sees full on blizzard conditions, and huge drifts of snow can exceed heights of 14 feet, though annual snowfall is only about 5 inches.
Mauna Kea is also famous for the 13 observatories atop the summit. This is the world’s largest concentration of astronomical observatories, and at least a dozen different countries are involved in running these telescopes.
The reason there are so many telescopes atop Mauna Kea is because it is the very best place on the planet for this purpose.
First of all, the volcano is so tall at nearly 14,000 feet that it is above almost half of the Earth’s atmosphere, and also above interfering light, turbulence, and moisture. Atop Mauna Kea there is only about 60% as much oxygen as at ocean level.
The most amazing telescopes atop Mauna Kea are the 111-foot tall Keck Telescopes, which are the biggest optical infrared telescopes on Earth. These twin Keck telescopes cost $70 million each to build in the 1990s.
The highly-polished Keck Telescope mirrors are each 10 meters in diameter and composed of 36 smaller mirrors that are controlled by computers to work together as if they were one big mirror.
Astronomers and physicists have also figured out how to combine the light gathering power of these two huge telescopes so that they work as if they were one large telescope to see distant galaxies. The Keck has seen objects more than 15 billion light years from Earth - this is the farthest ever seen by humans.
So if you are visiting Gourmet Kona Coffee Country and taking a Kona Farm Tour, tasting delicious premium gourmet Kona coffee and enjoying the beautiful landscapes, then you may want to follow up this visit with a drive to the top of Mauna Kea Volcano, the tallest mountain on Earth!