The Other Side of the Other Side Part 2

So after checking out Hilo and the Puna district (southeast part of the island), we met up with Michelle (Sarah's cousin by marriage) who offered us a great opportunity to help plant some native trees 7000 ft. up the tallest volcano on the island, Mauna Kea (14,000 + ft.). It was very neat because we were above the cloud inversion layer, so we were basically looking down on the clouds the whole time. When it was clear we could see the mountain on Maui. But being that high meant it got super cold at night, I mean like 30 degrees cold. Brrrrr. We got to sleep in these funny little a-frame cabin things. We also got hooked up with some sweet camo overalls :) Ha ha! The terrain was pretty gently sloping, rocky and dry grassland. It kind of reminded me of Marin a bit. It looked nothing like we were on a tropical island. All of the grasses are non-native though, as this mountain used to be completely covered in native forest under the tree line. Everywhere we looked up there, we could see dead remnants of the trees. The Brits brought cattle onto the island in the early 1800s, which destroyed the forest (along with logging) and transformed most of the slopes of Mauna Kea into grazing land.

So our job was to help re-forest a large section of Mauna Kea with native and endangered Mamane and Koa trees (Koa is in the pictures above) as well as a native shrub A' ali'i. Specifically we were doing this to help save the endangerd Palila bird which feeds on Mamane trees. It was pretty hard work, but a lot of fun with some good people, and we ended up getting over 3200 plants in the ground! Thanks Michelle for the good time! After four days of this we headed back down the mountain and waited on the side of the road for our farmer friend to pick us up. Unfortuantely we got caught in some crazy wind storm. It was like Kansas or something, but a fitting good bye to Mauna Kea!