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From: jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: OT: Eruption on Hawaii
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:57:34 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Public Access Networks Corp.
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In article <20250411a@crcomp.net>, Don  <g@crcomp.net> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>> Cryptoengineer wrote:
>>> Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>>> BCFD 36:
>>>>> Charles Packer wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm going to Honolulu next month for my mother's 104th birthday.
>>>>>> So I hope Pele will bless me with an eruption like that while I'm
>>>>>> there and I'll hop a flight to the Big Island in a heartbeat.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is very "hit or miss". Just because it is erupting today, doesn't
>>>>> mean that it will be erupting tomorrow, or even in two hours. Good luck.
>>>>
>>>> But, even if it's not erupting, Kilauea is beautiful and worth the visit.
>>>> It's dry right now so you won't see the sort of orchids you'd see later in
>>>> the year but it's still magnificent.
>>>> --scott
>>>
>>>If you have time, and can manage the altitude, visit the Mauna Loa
>>>Observatory. You need to go on one of the jitney tours (no car rentals).
>>>You won't be able to enter the telescope domes, but the view is other
>>>worldly.
>>>
>>>It's at nearly 14,000 feet, and we stopped for a while at 9000 (where
>>>the base station is) to acclimate.
>>>
>>>Our tour was timed to start descending just after sunset, and the driver
>>>stopped partway down to give us a sky tour, using a powerful handheld
>>>laser as a pointer, in the darkest sky you'll probably ever experience.
>>
>> We were allowed to drive up to an observation point on Mauna Kea
>> in 2011. What we discovered is that not every car is able to do
>> that. On the first attempt, the car reached marker five and it just
>> would not continue up.
>>
>> Once we were up there, I was able to determine the anoxia slowed
>> my reading speed by about one third, and running around was just
>> not in the cards...
>
>One day, my bicycling buddy's brother, who lives in the Los Angeles
>metro area, had the bright idea for all of us to spin to the top of
>Mauna Kea on bicycles. Kea tops out at about 14,000 feet. How hard
>can it be?
>    It seemed best to train for this tentative trip (it never
>happened) on my local mountain. [1] You can click on the link to look
>at the winding road up "my" mountain in the topmost picture. The highway
>commences on the right side of the image and also winds up on the right
>side. All-in-all, an approximate 1,000 foot gain in elevation is
>achieved.
>    If you do the math, repeating the loop fourteen times is equivalent
>to one spin up Mauna Kea. My training topped out at a triplet, three
>times around the loop, or a shade shy of a quarter of the way up Kea.
>In a word, it's torturous to spin up Kea.

My brothers and a nephew scaled Mauna Loa on foot (I wasn't there
yet) using grit, physical fitness and making the youngest one 
carry everything.

One of my brothers had a friend who thought it would be a splendid 
idea to scuba dive, then drive up to the top of Mauna Kea. It turns
out this is a great way to get the bends, and to run up medical 
costs high enough that guy will be working to pay off his debts 
for the rest of his life. 

My father, his sister, and a cousin (I think) climbed Maui's
Haleakala as kids. The cousin had a backpack full of oranges.
Whenever Bill and Gigi got thirsty, they'd sneak an orange out
of the backpack. To make sure their cousin didn't notice their
backpack getting lighter, they replaced each orange with a rock.
By the time they got to the top, the backpack was mostly filled
with rocks.

-- 
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