Winter excursions 1/7/14

 In the last week of November my visitor, Chuck Wolf, and I drove up Mauna Kea on to Mono Road which transverses the mountain at 5-6000 feet elevation.  All these photos are his.  Our main goal was to see the upper edge of the Hakalau National Forest which starts only a couple miles above our house but there is no access except from the top side on a 4-wheel drive road.  The abrupt tree line is because the higher elevations rarely get rain.

 Above the tree line but still wet enough for grass used to be free range cattle country.  They have now all been moved out or shot in order to allow reforestation to protect the watershed.  Here I'm walking towards one of the corrals whee the cattle were trucked out from. In the old days there were actual cattle drives all the way down to export or slaughter points on the coast.

 This is a close-up of the monument at Dr's Pit which I wrote an entry about a couple years ago.

 Once you hike into the forest it quickly becomes a case of you can't see the forest for the trees.  Also, although rare native birds can be heard in the trees, by the time you spot them then get a camera on them they are gone.

 We saw about a dozen Nene in the open areas above the forest.  They are coming back from near extinction quite nicely.

 Here I am resting in my favorite Koa tree.  It looks like it fell over about 50-100 years ago and keep growing since.

 Note how the grass is greener under the tree.  You might think the grass would get less water there than that in the open but the mist from the few clouds that do get that high is condensed out of the air onto the the tree twigs and leaves and then falls to the grass on the ground.

 Dr's Pit trail is only marked by this small sign.

As in Eastern Washington, introduced turkeys are spreading on Hawaii.  These are about the 3,800 foot level on the way down to Waimea from Dr's Pit.  The intervening road is nearly impassable.  DO NOT TRY IT WITHOUT FOUR WHEEL DRIVE!

2013 WAS A DRY ONE here on Hawaii - about 25% below normal.  But starting about 12/20 the rain returned and we have even been having some local flooding this month.  Our nights have gotten down to 60 f and the sky has been dark so we are especially enjoying the sunny warm days that we still get occasionally.  We even got to go snorkeling  over at Kailua two days ago and didn't get cold at all.

Aloha!