The monster Hawaiian mountain of Mauna Kea will have you seeing stars even if you’re not an astronomer
This is it: the biggest, baddest climb of them all, rising an incredible 4,192m over a distance of 92km. Say aloha to our monster friend
Imagine this: you’re riding up the Col d’izoard in the Alps. From Guillestre in the south it’s a long slog of 31km; the average gradient is reasonable at around 4% but still you’re thankful when you arrive at the summit. Except when you get there you find yourself at the foot of Alpe d’huez. Now you’ve got another 16km of climbing and the gradient has pitched up by quite a bit. Just as the summit of the Alpe arrives, you’re transported to the base of the Col de la Croix de Fer and you have to face another 22km at 5%. And then it gets worse. After the Croix de Fer you have to tackle the Mortirolo – 11km at 11% – followed immediately by Monte Zoncolan, a brutal ascent of 10km with an average gradient of 12% and spikes above 20%.
That, essentially, is what climbing Mauna Kea is like. Except it is potentially tougher as there’s a 7.5km section near the top that’s loose gravel and has ramps of 20%, and the thin air at 4,000m altitude means that every effort is amplified as your lungs fight to get enough oxygen.
So serious is this climb that if you don’t have a suitable 4x4 support vehicle, there’s every chance that the local park rangers will simply refuse to let you continue to ride up the mountain.
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Mauna Kea is a vast volcano on the largest of the Hawaiian Islands, commonly known as Big Island. Its summit is 4,207m above sea level, but when measured from its base deep underwater it rises 10,211m, which when looked at in that sense makes it the tallest mountain in the world.
Unlike the jagged peaks of the Alps or Himalayas, Mauna Kea is a great, rounded mass that squats benignly in the centre of the island, nuzzled up against its lower but more voluminous volcano sibling, Mauna Loa.
Its sheer size and position dominating everything around it means that, unsurprisingly, it was considered sacred by ancient Hawaiians, who believed it was the meeting point of the sky god Wakea and the land goddess Papa.
Even today, native Hawaiian groups campaign to prevent development work taking place on Mauna Kea, which they consider to be sacrilegious. The cause of their concern is a cluster of observatories at the summit, which have been built to take advantage of the clear skies and lack of light pollution, making this one of the world’s foremost spots for stargazing.
Looking at it from the coast, it’s hard to get a sense of the scale of Mauna Kea. Indeed it would be easy to peer over at its gently curved flanks and assume it couldn’t be that hard. Photographs don’t really do it justice – the
landscape is so broad and open that gradients don’t seem to register. In truth, the only way to understand what the climb is like is to do it.
Worlds within worlds
Begin by dipping a wheel in the sea. That way you know that you are starting the ride from 0m of altitude, and the only way is up.
The first section takes you from Waikoloa Beach, past the villas and hotels, and onto the Waikoloa Road. This is America, where the car is king, so the road is big, wide, long and most likely quite busy with traffic. Fortunately the hard shoulder is also wide, affording plenty of space for cyclists to ride without fear of being crushed by Caddies and Chevvies.
Straight away the road tilts up, but at this point it is around 3% in gradient and it’s only the strangely heavy feeling in your legs that lets you know you are gaining height. The palm trees of the coast give way to grass and scrubland pockmarked by patches of dark, volcanic rock, and the views go on endlessly into the distance.
It’s so featureless that it can be difficult to gauge distance, and by the time you arrive at the first major junction a glance at your bike computer will reveal you have ticked off 22km and 765m of ascent. A left turn is followed by a comparatively flat 7.5km section, before a right turn brings you onto the Old Saddle Road, so called because it sits in the curved valley between the two volcanoes.
Again the yellow line down the middle of the road seems to go on forever, but now the going is getting noticeably steeper and the surrounding countryside is getting greener, with patches of forest to offer an occasional defence from the wind. After 16km of uphill battle, the Old Saddle Road segues into the New Saddle Road, where the gradient relents slightly, but at 22km would still be the main climb of any other ride.
By the time you arrive at the turnoff to the Mauna Kea Access Road, you will have already
You have ridden uphill for 71km and gained more than 2,000m of height. And the hard bit is just starting
ridden uphill for 71km and gained more than 2,000m of height (but done significantly more actual climbing than that, because the road is undulating). And the hard bit is just starting.
Up above the clouds
Almost unbelievably, there’s still nearly 2,200m of vertical ascent to come, averaging around 10% over 24km – the Zoncolan plus the Mortirolo. As if to mark the transition, the surrounding landscape becomes more dusty and barren as a sign that life at this altitude struggles to survive.
The first 10km is on well-surfaced roads and includes nasty spikes of 15%. It comes to an end at the Visitor Centre, which is a great place to stop, eat, recover and realise that at 2,800m you are now higher than any Alpine pass. You can also contemplate the sign that reads, ‘Warning: hazardous road. Travel at your own risk beyond this point.’
It’s here that many cyclists switch to a mountain bike, or at least change to wider gravel tyres and footwear better designed for walking – something you’re almost guaranteed to be doing at some point soon. The next 7.5km are on loose, slippery gravel with sections at 20%. Afterwards the transition back to tarmac, while welcome, is just a reminder that there are still another six, steep, relentless kilometres to the summit.
To arrive at the observatories and look out over the moonscape above the clouds is to have completed one of the greatest challenges known to cycling. Only a tiny number of people can say they’ve conquered Mauna Kea, a climb that has a compelling claim to be the hardest in the world.
The landscape becomes more barren as a sign that life at this altitude struggles to survive