Do you ever have a phrase that runs through your head in a specific person’s voice? The one that’s been stuck in my head all year is my sister saying, “Make good choices!” Specifically, in the exacerbated tone she uses to remind her 10-year-old to make good choices. It pops into my head whenever I get lost hiking or have some terrain to negotiate scrambling or a line to pick skiing. Now I say it to my friends when they leave somewhere they’ll be making choices.
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| For the record, we make great choices! |
During my recent trip to Hawaii I had to remind myself to make good choices constantly because solo vacationing is mostly just making choices. Where to sleep, what to eat, how to avoid crowds, what to do, how to get to the places to do things… I’m grateful I got a vacation, but, damn, so many choices.
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| Rainbows on the slopes of Mauna Loa? Awesome! |
The literal high point and emotional everything point of my trip was summiting Mauna Loa. I figured summiting the 2nd tallest mountain in Hawaii via the 12-mile summit trail from the weather observatory was a great way to not celebrate Thanksgiving. And it was really great! I got to pee into a crevasse I couldn't see the bottom of! I saw so much cool lava rock! I added 8 miles to my day because I spotted so cool rocks on a different trail! I saw the best sunset of my trip that was full of great sunsets! I spent 8 hours above 12,000 feet! I tripped and fell hard enough I thought I broke my hand! I cried, sang, and talked my way down the mountain for 2.5 hours!
So, some good choices were made along with some sub-optimal choices.
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| You might have been tempted to detour for this lava rock, too |
I couldn’t fully grasp the enormity of Mauna Loa or the Moku‘āweoweo caldera until I saw the summit. Mauna Loa rises 13,681 feet above sea level (more than 100 feet higher than Utah’s highest point), but then the volcano continues below sea level for another 16,000 feet and it’s so massive that the ocean floor is depressed 26,000 feet, bringing its total height from top to bottom to 56,000 feet (way bigger than Everest)! The lava produced by Mauna Loa is more flowy than other types of lava, so it spreads out farther creating a shield volcano: it’s tall but doesn’t look it because it’s so broad. Average slope is 2-3 degrees, so I got 20 miles of hiking in but only 3,000 feet of elevation gain.
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| It was kind of exciting packing a down jacket and gloves along with my snorkel gear |
Mauna Loa is very young and still changing. The oldest flows on the volcano are 200,000 years old and it's most recent eruption was in 1984. For comparison, the granite at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon is 32 million years old, and that’s young for Utah rock. While not actively spewing lava, things are still happening on Mauna Loa. The week I visited the summit was ‘inflating’ and there were 110 small earthquakes. I even saw a steam vent in the caldera, which indicates the rock there was at least 900°F. Eruptions of Mauna Loa have played a constant role in Hawaiian history, disrupting battles and obliterating cities. During a 1942 eruption the Army Air Force actually tried dropping bombs on the lava flow to change its path away from a city!
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| Moku‘āweoweo caldera - this was once a lake of liquid hot magma! |
The path across the lava flows are marked by ahu: rock stacks. I love the care that goes into building these signals across the landscape. With no plants or soil to cut trails through, the only way to know where to go is to follow the ahu. Seriously, I went all day without seeing a single plant and only a few spiders.
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| Ahu + Mauna Kea |
I tried summit yoga, as I like to do, but was unable to stand on one leg for any period of time
After my snack, I started speed walking back at dusk repeating, "make good choices" specifically referencing my foot placement. An old back injury I neglected for many years has weakened my right leg, so I trip a lot on my right foot and have to constantly remind it to do it's job. But also there was an amazing sunset to view! And Mauna Kea was looking good as hell! So it was a distracted hustle.
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| Just before tragedy struck |
There I
was, alone on the most massive volcano in the world. Making an intense move
where I shifted my weight from my right foot to my left – you might call it a
step – when out of nowhere this gnarly piece of basalt grabbed my right foot
and sent me flying through the air. I hit the ground hard and it hurt so much!
I got up quickly because there was no time to waste (and what if Pele saw) and
it happened again! At which point I stayed on the ground and sobbed.
I
literally yelled, “This is stupid!!! Why am I even doing this?!?!” And sobbed
very loudly because there was no one to hear me.
All I wanted was some company. Someone to validate my pain and tell me that I don’t make terrible choices. But I was as alone as I could possibly get. None of the text or video messages I’d sent from the summit had gone through. The only person who even kind of knew what I was doing was the guy I was dating and we weren’t at a point where he could know whether I wasn’t texting him because everything was fine and unremarkable or because I was mortally wounded on top of a mountain 3,000 miles away. And I’d said I would be going on a gentle, not-steep, 10-mile hike. That was a bad choice (the failure to leave details like a trail name and start and end time; it's fine to not develop telepathy in the first weeks of dating).
I sat there on the mountain for several minutes sobbing before I was able to make good choices. It went something like this:
- Quick head to toe WFR check to make sure everything was fine. Right hand and left knee hurt like hell - still do - but they were probably not broken.
- Turn on the headlamp and plug in the power brick. Good job, Becka! You were prepared there.
- Look at the ground, dummy! Once the sun finally set, I was able to focus a little better on my foot placement.
- Sing! When I am most scared, the only songs I can remember are the church songs of my youth. I am bad at singing and only bust these songs out when I’m scared, so it’s pitchy and shaky. Unfortunately, it’s been a while, so my playlist was brief:
- I Am a Child of God (x7)
- The Spirit of God (x3)
- The Army of Helaman song (can’t remember the name, so just once)
- How Great Thou Art (x1.5. Oof. That song makes me feel things)
- Joy to the World --> Silent Night --> Deck the Halls (when did these become one song I can’t remember all the words to?)
- I had ‘Alexander Hamilton’ from ‘Hamilton’ stuck in my head all summer, so I thought I could recite it on my own. I got a few lines in before the mumbles took over.
- Once I ran out of things to sing, it was time to talk. Despite the previous wailing and singing, I feel really self-conscious just talking to myself out in the wilderness. But there’s no better way to get your mind away from freaking out about all the scary things hiding in the darkness than to dissect all the things that have and could yet go wrong in your dating life. I think I made some good progress. I talked through some recent devastating conversations and my experience with the current dating person. I talked through applying what I’ve learned from therapy and books to future decisions.
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| Full moon was bad for star gazing, great for night hiking |
Eventually
the weather observatory came into view and I made it back to my car. One of the
things I love about a long hike is that I come down a different person than I
was when I started.
Unfortunately,
on the drive down to Hilo (at sea level), I passed through a cloud of something
I was very allergic to and turned into a snotty mess. Then I had to wait for 30
minutes before I could finally get into my hotel room and blow my nose. It was
the most painful nose blow I’ve ever had. My skull hadn’t fully repressurized
because of all the boogers. And it took three blows before I cleared everything
out. I was once again curled up on the ground crying, but this time I was
quieter because there were people around to hear me scream, ‘Ohmygod! My
sinuses!’
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| My very fancy, kind of cold Thanksgiving dinner after the summit |
When things calm down, I highly recommend a visit to Kona. It has everything a science nerd could ever want. Geology, botany, history! Holes into the dang Earth! And the things they can cook in banana leaves… drool… Try the Lau Lau plate.
Until then, you can still check out what’s happening on Mauna Loa here: https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mauna-loa/volcano-updates
