MOKUAVTEOWE0 IN 1905.
Prof. Willis T. Pope, of Honolulu, has kindly favored us with a brief sketch of his ascent of Mauna Loa in 1905. The route was different from that essayed by any of the earlier explorers, and for some reasons it is preferable to the others.
Our party for the trip to Mokuaweoweo on Mauna Loa con sisted of three persons : Joseph Gaspar, the guide, Mr. R. 0. Reiner, and myself. We started from Napoopoo on the west coast of Hawaii at about 6:3o A. M., July r6th. Each rode a mule, and our supplies for the trip were carried on a pack mule.
From our starting point little could be seen of Mauna Loa on account of the timber and great mass of clotids that floated above its summit. The trail led up a constant incline through the guava bushes. Soon it entered a region covered with a dense growth of koa and ohia forest. The soil was rich and dark in color, and showed Lut little evidence of having been a lava flow ; however, we could occasionally distinguish where the flows of aa had been by the more dense growth of plant life. About eleven o'clock we reached the Greenwell dairy, a ranch house where our ten gallon water tank was filled. From this point the woods seemed to grow more scanty and the koa trees less numerous. About 2 P. M. we halted near a clump of trees and made our camp. This was the highest point where we could find good grass for the mules. The elevation is about 7,00o feet. There was no wind and the woods were silent, very few birds were to be seen or heard. The wild hogs that are said to be so numerous kept out of sight, but there was evidence of their having rooted in the patches of soil before we appeared. The night was cool and the thermometer registered 43° in the early morning. By 6 A. M. we were again packed and off. The trail soon entered upon the naked lava where we could get a good view of the entire western slope of Mauna Loa and also a grand view of Hualalai. The en tire mountain side is composed of a vast field of pahoehoe sepa rated by great flows of aa. Here the lava is grayish black in color and much broken up due to weathering. There are no indi cations whatever of gulches, but occasionally there are great caverns large enough to ride into on horseback. The flows of aa become so numerous that it is difficult to find a way around the various peninsulas of it. On one of these large rivers of aa there are nine different cones or blowholes that are from fifty to one hundred feet across and of about the same height. In many places the lava has flown down in narrow streams looking like planta tion ditches. The mules would often follow in these ditches for several hundred yards until it was necessary to get out on ac count of the stirrups striking the sides, or the mules breaking through into cavities below. The aa became much more numer ous as we approached the summit, and the last mile or more was made through a flow of it. All of these upper flows appear as fresh as if they had just been formed. From this Kona side the angle is about the same until the top is reached and we came upon the edge of the top crater rather unexpectedly to me.
We arrived at the edge of Mokuaweoweo at 2 :20 P. M., having made the trip in a little over sixteen hours, counting out the night spent at the timber line. We were now near the highest point
on the west side, 13,675 feet, and made our camp in less than a hundred feet of the edge. All along the edge there were many huge cracks varying in width and depth. In one place a crack is over a hundred feet in width. Many of the narrow cracks con tain great masses of ice some twenty or thirty feet below the sur face which has formed from the snow that fills them during the winter months. The noon-day sun melts little pools in the tops of these ice masses and from these we got good drinking water.
After a hearty dinner we walked along the edge toward the south end of the crater. The great walls are quite vertical, highly colored and in general appear much more grand than the walls of Kilauea. Along this side it is supposed to he from Soo to I,000 feet to the bottom inside. There was smoke and steam arising from many cracks in the crater and near the south end there was quite a dense column creeping up the side and gently floating toward the southwest. During our entire stay on Mauna Loa there was no wind. By sundown we were back to our camp— the sunset was not a very grand one—and soon we were wrapped in our blankets. None of us slept well during the cold night : all seemed to have a headache. The thermometer registered 27°.
Next morning we were up early and after an attempt to drink some strong coffee we were off toward the north end of the crater and looking for a place to get down inside, which was found. In order to get down we were compelled to climb among the great boulders that seemed very dangerous. At first the bottom was rather smooth but grew rough as we got nearer the large crater. We went down three different ledges each two hundred or three hundred feet in depth. The floor got rougher as we advanced, great ugly masses of twisted, lava were interspersed with cracks and holes, and it had the appearance of having been burned or rather charred too much, and it cracked and crushed as we walked over it. From cracks and blowholes steam and sulphur smoke came out. Near the center is a cone about two hundred feet high. This cone is streaked with sulphur which gives it a very pretty appearance.
We returned by very much the same route as we had gone in. On both trips about the crater we noticed huge boulders, as large as barrels, that had been scattered here and there upon the lava outside the crater. They were of a yellow clay color and some quite red. Some of these had broken through the lava until they were almost buried, showing that they must have dropped from a great height ; and they were entirely unlike the lava into which they had fallen.
Progress was very slow ; though we did not rest very long at any place, our pedometer only recorded about a mile per hour. On reaching our camp we packed and started down at once about II :3o A. M. The journey down was pleasant and we felt better as we advanced. No attempt was made to camp and eat as no one cared for food. We traveled thirty-one hours without food. Reached the Greenwell ranch about ten o'clock in a downpour of rain.