Mauna Kea

• 1. Introduction

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  Mauna Kea, a volcano on the island of Hawaiʻi, sits at the center of an odd arithmetic problem. Mount Everest rises 8,848.86 meters above sea level. Mauna Kea's prominence measured from beneath the ocean is 9,330 meters, which is more than Everest's entire height. Only Everest rivals it on that measure. For that reason, some authorities have called Mauna Kea the tallest mountain in the world.

  The number is only the first oddity. This is a tropical island volcano that once wore an ice cap. Hawaiians regarded its summit as a region of the gods. Today its peak is crowded with scientific instruments. This documentary asks how one mountain came to carry all of that, why people have fought over it, and who now holds the power to decide its future.

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• 2. Measuring the Giant

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  At 4,207.3 meters, Mauna Kea's summit is the highest point in the state of Hawaii. It tops its bulkier neighbor Mauna Loa by about 38 meters. The island of Hawaiʻi also has the second highest high point of any island, behind New Guinea. Measured by prominence above sea level, Mauna Kea ranks fifteenth among the world's mountains. By topographic isolation, it ranks eighth.

  Calling it the tallest mountain depends on where a base is drawn, and a mountain's base has no firm definition. Published base-to-peak figures run from 32,696 feet to 17,205 meters. The lower figure reaches roughly to the deepest point of the Hawaiian Trough. The higher one counts the root buried far underground.

  Rival claims exist elsewhere. The climb from Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of Earth's seabed, to nearby Mount Lamlam is 37,820 feet. In South America, Richard's Deep in the Atacama Trench lies 8,065 meters down, near Llullaillaco, which stands 6,739 meters high. That gives a rise of 14,804 meters, described as "the highest slope on earth."

  Neither Lamlam nor Llullaillaco matches Mauna Kea's prominence, because neither rises out of a trench on every side. The Himalayas, with their tremendously deep roots, complicate the argument further. Beneath all of these measurements sits a mass of rock over 32,000 cubic kilometers in volume. That mass is so heavy that it and Mauna Loa press the ocean crust down by 6 kilometers.

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• 3. Fire and Ice

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  About one million years ago, the Hawaiʻi hotspot began pushing up Mauna Kea as a preshield volcano. It is one of five volcanoes that form the island of Hawaiʻi, and it ranks fourth oldest and fourth most active among them. Its shield stage was exceptionally active and lasted until 500,000 years ago. The quieter post-shield stage began between 250,000 and 200,000 years ago. The last eruption came roughly 4,500 to 6,000 years ago, and the volcano is now thought to be dormant. It is still slipping and flattening under its own weight, at less than 0.2 millimeters a year.

  Seventy million years of hotspot activity have strung out a chain 6,000 kilometers long, the Hawaiian Ridge-Emperor seamount chain. The Pacific plate drifts over a source of heat in the mantle, and each island marks a stage of that passage. Most researchers think the hotspot stayed largely stationary through the Cenozoic Era, though the view is not fully settled. Nobody has a definite explanation for what causes a hotspot in the first place.

  The rock records a slowly shrinking magma supply. Shield-stage tholeiitic basalts built the great bulk of the mountain. Over them lie the Hāmākua Volcanics, which erupted from 250,000 years ago until about 70,000 to 65,000 years ago. The youngest flows are the Laupāhoehoe Volcanics, dating from 65,000 to 4,000 years ago. Their lavas were thicker and held more volatiles, so they steepened the flanks. Explosive eruptions added cinder cones, and the summit now carries domes and cones up to 1.5 kilometers across and hundreds of meters tall. No summit caldera is visible, though a buried one may lie under later deposits.

  Mauna Kea is the only Hawaiian volcano with distinct evidence of glaciers. Mauna Loa probably had similar deposits, but later lava covered them. During past ice ages, a drop of a single degree let snow survive the summer at the summit and build an ice cap. Three glacial episodes are recorded over the last 180,000 years. The Pōhakuloa ran from 180,000 to 130,000 years ago, the Wāihu from 80,000 to 60,000, and the Mākanaka from 40,000 to 13,000. At greatest extent, ice reached down to between 3,200 and 3,800 meters. A patch of permafrost less than 25 meters across was found at the summit before 1974.

  Lake Waiau, at 3,969 meters, is the highest lake in the Pacific Basin and the only alpine lake in Hawaii. It covers just 0.73 hectares and is 3 meters deep when fullest. Radiocarbon dating shows it was clear of ice 12,600 years ago. Hawaiian lava is normally too permeable to hold a lake. Either sulfur-bearing steam turned volcanic ash into clay, or explosive contact between magma and water produced exceptionally fine ash that sealed the lake bed.

  Deep water was a surprise too. In 1993, University of Hawaiʻi drilling struck the first known artesian water on the island, more than 300 meters below sea level. Isotopes showed it began as rain falling on Mauna Kea above 2,000 meters. Two boreholes drilled in 2012 found water much higher and shallower than expected. Donald Thomas, director of the university's Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes, noted that water for high-elevation activities must be trucked in from Waimea or Hilo, calling it "an inefficient and expensive process."

  The United States Geological Survey rates the summit's volcanic hazard at 7 and the lower flanks at 8. On that scale, 9 is the lowest hazard, and it belongs to the extinct volcano Kohala. Since 8000 BC, lava has covered 20 percent of the summit and virtually none of the flanks. Mauna Kea is still expected to erupt again, probably from the upper flanks, sending aā flows 15-25 kilometers long. That is not likely within the next few centuries, and the loss of life would probably be small, but infrastructure would suffer significant damage.

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• 4. Region of the Gods

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  Poliahu, the deity of snow, is said in Hawaiian mythology to live on the summit of Mauna Kea. The summit itself was seen as the region of the gods, where benevolent spirits reside. The name is short for Mauna a Wākea. It means white mountain, a nod to the seasonal snow cap, and Wākea is also the Hawaiian sky god.

  All five volcanoes of Hawaiʻi were revered as sacred. A kapu, an ancient Hawaiian law, restricted visits to the peak to high-ranking aliʻi. Very few Hawaiians ever reached the top because of it.

  Around AD 1100, Hawaiians opened adze quarries high on the mountain. They sought its unusually dense basalt, formed when lava flows met glacial ice and cooled fast. Volcanic glass and gabbro went into blades and fishing gear, and māmane wood was preferred for handles. After AD 1400, at the quarries' peak, there were separate facilities for rough and fine cutting. Shelters held food, water and wood for the workers, and workshops made the finished tools.

  Lake Waiau gave those workers drinking water. Native chiefs also dipped the umbilical cords of newborn babies in it, to pass on the strength of the mountain. Workers built shrines to their gods as part of quarrying, and the shrines and tools still lie at the sites. Most of them are inside what is now the Mauna Kea Ice Age Reserve. Use of the quarries faded, and they were abandoned after metal tools arrived.

  Between the 12th and late 18th centuries, daily life spread across the slopes. Land was divided into ahupuaʻa, long strips running from mountain summit to coast. The summit belonged to the ahupuaʻa of Kaohe, and part of its eastern slope reached into Humuula. The upper māmane-naio forest supplied plants and birds, including the uau, the nēnē and the palila. The lower koa-ōhia forest gave wood for canoes and ornate feathers for decoration.

  Archaeologists have worked on the mountain since the 1980s. By 2000, about 27 percent of the Science Reserve had been surveyed. That survey found 76 shrines, 4 adze workshops, 3 other markers, 1 confirmed burial site and 4 possible ones. By 2009, the count of identified sites had risen to 223. The shrines ring the summit along what may be an ancient snow line, perhaps marking the border of the sacred zone. Oral history mentions many burials, yet few have been confirmed, and the cinder cones hold no shrines or artifacts. They may have been reserved for burials.

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• 5. Climbing the Mountain

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  No trails from before European contact have been found on Mauna Kea. Travelers probably followed natural ridges and water sources instead. Families kept shrines near the summit and made trips to visit them, and traditions about ascending the mountain survive today.

  On the 26th of August 1823, Joseph F. Goodrich, an American missionary, made the first recorded ascent completed in a single day. He noticed a small arrangement of stones at the top, a hint that others had come before. Goodrich logged four ecosystems between base and summit and visited Lake Waiau on the way.

  On the 17th of June 1825, an expedition from HMS Blonde, led by the botanist James Macrae, reached the summit. Macrae was the first to record the Mauna Kea silversword. He described a plant with sharp, silver-colored leaves and brown flowers, "truly superb, and almost worth the journey of coming here to see it on purpose."

  In January 1834, the botanist David Douglas climbed the mountain and described in detail how plant species divide by altitude. Six months later, in July, he was found dead on a traverse from Kamuela to Hilo. His body lay in a pit meant to trap wild cattle. Murder was suspected, but an accidental fall is more likely. The spot, Ka lua kauka, is marked by Douglas fir trees named for him.

  In 1881, Queen Emma traveled to the peak to bathe in Lake Waiau, during the contest over who would be ruling chief of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. On the 6th of August 1889, E.D. Baldwin left Hilo and followed cattle trails to the summit. Trails made by moving game herds later became routes for horseback riders.

  In February 2021, Victor Vescovo and Clifford Kapono climbed the mountain from its base on the seafloor, 16,785 feet below sea level. They descended in the submersible Limiting Factor, then paddled ocean kayaks 27 miles toward shore. Bicycles took them to a camp at about 9,000 feet, and they walked from there to the 13,802-foot summit. Their total gain was 30,587 feet.

  Most visitors have it easier. The Saddle Road, named for the saddle-shaped plateau between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, was finished in 1943. Much of the plateau holds the Pohakuloa Training Area, the largest military training ground in Hawaiʻi. It covers 108,863 acres, on state land leased to the US Army since 1956. Fifteen threatened and endangered plants, three endangered birds and one endangered bat species live there.

  Before the 1930s, only the hardy reached the upper slopes, mostly hunters tracking game and hikers. The Civilian Conservation Corps built stone cabins in that decade that served as base camps. The modern Onizuka Center for International Astronomy grew out of those facilities. A summit road, built in 1964, finally made the peak accessible to many more people, and the paved Mauna Kea Access Road now runs up to the center at 2,804 meters. By 2007, over 100,000 tourists and 32,000 vehicles were arriving each year at the adjacent Visitor Information Station.

  The climate there is alpine, with frost common year-round, though the average monthly temperature never drops below freezing. Snow can fall above 11,000 feet in any month and is most frequent from October to April. One study found that about a third of visitors and two-thirds of professional astronomers on the mountain have had symptoms of acute altitude sickness. Brakes often overheat on the descent, and no fuel is sold on the mountain. A ranger program began in 2001, and between 5,000 and 6,000 people reach the summit each year.

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• 6. Hooves on the Mountain

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  Because of its height, Mauna Kea has the greatest variety of ecosystems anywhere in the Hawaiian archipelago. They form concentric rings, divided into an alpine zone at the summit, a māmane-naio forest on the flanks and a koa-ōhia forest at the base. Hawaiʻi's remoteness produced many species found nowhere else. An estimated third of the island's endemic species are already gone.

  Above the tree line, the summit is mostly lava rock and alpine tundra, with little soil and very low water retention. The wēkiu bug lives here on an unusual diet of dead insects carried up by wind and left on snow banks. It survives extreme elevations with natural antifreeze in its blood, and it stays under heated surfaces most of the time. Wolf spiders hide under rocks that absorb heat. Moths rely on cold-resistant chemicals in their bodies.

  The Mauna Kea silversword was once down to just 50 plants. It was long assumed to belong only to the alpine zone, but pressure from livestock drove it there, and it can grow lower too. Native Hawaiians had already changed the lowlands by bringing in plants and animals, and many bird species went extinct. The Polynesian rat appears to be the main cause of the lowland forest's collapse.

  In 1793, George Vancouver brought cattle to Hawaiʻi as a tribute to King Kamehameha I. By the early 19th century they had escaped and were roaming freely, damaging the ecosystem. In 1809, John Palmer Parker arrived, befriended the king and was put in charge of the island's cattle. After a land grant in 1845, he founded Parker Ranch on the northern slope, and it still operates. Today the island has over 4,600 introduced plant species, against an estimated 1,000 native ones.

  The māmane-naio forest, between 2,000 and 3,000 meters, feeds the palila on māmane seeds and naio fruit. The palila once lived on Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Hualālai. It is now confined to Mauna Kea, in just 10 percent of its former range, and is critically endangered. Feral sheep, cattle and goats are the largest threat to that forest. A program to remove them ran from the late 1920s through 1949. By the 1950s only a few hundred animals remained.

  Then hunters arrived. In 1959, the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources switched to a sustained-control program that kept animals available as game. Mouflon were introduced from 1962 to 1964. A 1964 plan to release axis deer was stopped only by protests from ranchers, who feared crop damage and disease. Later, a plan proposed fencing 25 percent of the forest for protection and managing the other 75 percent for hunting. The land was partitioned, but no money was set aside for building the fence.

  The Endangered Species Act passed in the middle of that dispute. The National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund sued the Department of Land and Natural Resources. The landmark case was Palila v. Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, decided in 1978. The court sided with conservationists and held that federal law outranks state control of wildlife. Hawaiʻi had to remove the feral animals, and a second court order followed in 1981. An active control program exists today, but it is not rigorous enough to let the forest recover substantially.

  The lowest forest, koa-ōhia, fared worse. Loggers cut heavily in the 1830s to supply lumber for new houses, and settlers burned vast stretches for sugarcane. Plantation boilers and home hearths consumed the surviving trees as firewood. By 1880 the forest had almost vanished, and by 1900 logging had moved to Kona and Maui. After the sugar industry collapsed in the 1990s, much of the land lay fallow. Some is grazed, farmed or planted with eucalyptus for wood pulp.

  The Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1985, protects 32,733 acres of what remains. It shelters eight endangered bird species, twelve endangered plants and the Hawaiian hoary bat. Replanting there began in 1989. The Hawaiian crow, extinct in the wild, may someday be reintroduced to the refuge.

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• 7. A Window on the Universe

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  The summit of Mauna Kea sits above the inversion layer, which traps most clouds below it. The air above is dry and free of atmospheric pollution. That dryness matters for submillimeter and infrared astronomy. The atmosphere is also stable and lacks turbulence, giving some of the world's best astronomical seeing. Legislation limiting light pollution from the surrounding area preserves the very dark skies.

  In the early 1960s, the Hawaiʻi Island Chamber of Commerce encouraged astronomy on the mountain as an economic stimulus. The timing matched the search by University of Arizona astronomer Gerard Kuiper for sites suited to newly improved infrared detectors. In 1964, Kuiper's assistant Alika Herring tested the summit and confirmed its outstanding suitability. A fierce three-way contest for NASA money to build a large telescope followed. The rivals were Kuiper, Harvard University and the University of Hawaiʻi, which had experience only in solar astronomy. The funds went to the "upstart" Hawaiʻi proposal.

  The University of Hawaiʻi rebuilt its small astronomy department into a new Institute for Astronomy. In 1968, the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources gave it a 65-year lease on all land within a 4-kilometer radius of its telescope. That is essentially everything above 11,500 feet. When the 88-inch telescope was completed in 1970, it ranked as the seventh largest optical and infrared telescope in the world.

  By 1970, the US Air Force and Lowell Observatory had each built a 24-inch telescope there. Today the Mauna Kea Science Reserve has 13 observation facilities, each funded by as many as 11 countries. Nine telescopes work in visible and infrared light, three in the submillimeter band and one in radio. Their mirrors or dishes range from 0.9 to 25 meters. The Hubble Space Telescope has a 2.4-meter mirror, similar in size to the 88-inch, now the second smallest telescope on the mountain.

  In 1973, Canada and France agreed to build the 3.6-meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. It was the first project to draw organized worry from local groups.

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• 8. Who Decides

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  The Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources drafted a first management plan in 1977 and supplemented it in 1980. In January 1982, the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents approved a plan supporting continued scientific development. In 1998, 2,033 acres moved from the observatory lease to the Mauna Kea Ice Age Reserve. A new plan in 2000, meant to serve until 2020, created an Office of Mauna Kea Management. It set aside 525 acres for astronomy and shifted the other 10,763 acres to natural and cultural preservation. It was later revised after the Hawaiian community said that the mountain's cultural values were not being respected.

  A "Save Mauna Kea" movement considers development of the mountain sacrilegious. Native Hawaiian nonprofits such as Kahea also oppose it on cultural and religious grounds. A multi-telescope "outrigger" project proposed in 2006 was eventually canceled. The Thirty Meter Telescope, approved in April 2013, became the next flashpoint. In October 2014, protesters interrupted its groundbreaking ceremony, and work stopped temporarily.

  In late March 2015, demonstrators again blocked the road to the summit. On the 2nd of April 2015, 300 protesters gathered near the visitor center, and 12 were arrested. Another 11 were arrested at the summit. Construction halted on the 7th of April 2015, after protests spread across the state. Concerns included land appraisals and consultation with Native Hawaiians. After several halts, the project was voluntarily postponed. Governor Ige announced substantial management changes while saying the project could proceed, and the Supreme Court of Hawaiʻi approved resuming construction on the 31st of October 2018.

  Online, a Change.org petition posted on the 14th of July 2019 demanded an immediate halt to construction and gathered over 278,000 signatures worldwide. Four days later, another petition called for Governor David Ige's impeachment over his support of the telescope. It drew over 62,000 signatures. As of late 2021, construction plans were on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic and a shift in funding that might bring federal money from the National Science Foundation. Polls commissioned by local media show over two thirds of island residents supporting the telescope. Support among Native Hawaiian respondents is split, at about half.

  A July 2022 state law moved control of the master land lease from the university to a new body, the Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority. Its 12 members, 11 of them voting, include representatives of the university, astronomers and Native Hawaiians. Its aim is to balance their conflicting interests. After a five-year transition beginning on the 1st of July 2023, the authority will become the principal manager of state lands on the mountain. It will issue new land use permits, and that matters because the current master lease ends in 2033. Any observatory without a new lease by then will be decommissioned.

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