the most hilariously bad Mauna Loa trip

Last week (2/21 - 2/23) the three of us headed back up to Mauna Loa to try to finish off the data collection stage of my project. We had 13 field areas to cover and feared that the weather would not hold and come sweeping in from the SW to cover us in fog and rain.

Within the first few hours, things started to go downhill. Kelly and Jamal each have a hand-held GPS unit with the grid coordinates already uploaded and labeled so they can just click "go to" and get the bearing and distance to their next point. Kelly was the first to notice that instead of her distance to walk being 20 - 100 m, it was around 7368374 km. Turns out the points had not been "projected" within the correct global units and were plotting, basically, in random space. My palm pilot had the correct points on it, so I was able to give them the correct coordinates and they could manually enter the points. This, unfortunately, sapped my battery power and required us to stay up late in the tent typing in numbers. A`a` on the left and pahoehoe on the right


The next morning, after sleeping in -4 C, was crisp and clear and we headed up to the summit, with well wishes of "Happy Counting!". I managed to walk directly in to a hole and twist my ankle. Despite my best efforts, I managed to fall over like a lumbering rhinoceros with all my gear flailing behind me. Basically, hiking on pahoehoe and a`a` is like using a stairmaster, so an ankle injury makes one almost useless. I hiked on it for about 4 hours, stopping once to get an ACE wrap from Kelly, until lunch time. Lunch came conveniently when all 3 of my spare batteries for the palm pilot died and I finished the last point in my field area. During a lunch time conference (hmm, cold soup), we decided that I would go pack up the car while they did another field area and then head home early.

My cankle! groovy


When I was about 100 m from the car, I noticed that our tent was not where we left it this morning. Instead of zipping up the doors, we had left them wide open, giving the wind a perfect opportunity to steal it. I located it quite a distance downhill, upside down, with all the sleeping bags (5 of them), ipod and speakers, littered on the ground. Took me some fancy maneuvering and careful placement of rocks, to prevent the tent from blowing away again, before everything was put back in their place and the car packed. At this point I radioed Kelly and Jamal to tell them the car was packed and that a blanket of fog was approaching from the saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Kelly then informed me that she could no longer see the car and that they were heading back now before it got too bad.

The prefect end to our camping trip gone awry came as we drove down in a hail storm. Yes, HAIL, for 40 minutes, in Hawaii. What?

This week has been spent in the office since its snowing and foggy on the summit but next week we are starting the first stage of Jamal's GPS project.