Driving to the Rock House.

One of the really nice things about Maui and the Big Island is that you have so many different climate zones because of the altitude changes. The drive from the airport up to the astronomers quarters (Hale Pohaku, House of Rock) is always really interesting. First you start with hot and humid on the wet side of the island, in Hilo.
Then, at about 1000ft, you get to the upland forrests where it's still wet, but a little cooler. Lots of gum trees and other greenery.

Maybe around 3000-4000 feet, the O'hia trees come out. They're a little shorter and the forrest is a little less dense. Still wet though.
Above that, you start to get into "cloud-forrest". The precipitation goes down a bit, but there's plenty of fog and cloud to provide moisture. The o'hia trees are a bit shorter and more spread out.
Then, at about 5000-6500, you get to the lava plains where the lava from Mauna Loa covers up parts of the land and you get weird forrest covered hills with grassy plains and bare lava rock. You're above the clouds sometimes here.
Then, as you turn up the Mauna Kea access road, you go into pure grass plains at about 7000 feet. It's quite flat and feels unlike Hawaii.


Above that, the grass starts to die out (water I think) and the native shrubs take over - it's a desert up here. You start to climb the volcano.

Finally, you're at the rock house. It's right where the last of the shrubs meets pure desert with nothing but cinder and lava. It's very strange terrain. Desolate. 9000 feet above the sea.

You can see how the shrubs basically end just above the "compound". There are native grasses, plants and other random small things up to maybe 12000ft, but it gets sparse quick. Rainfall here is tiny.

Here's a view of the last 6000 feet of the mountain. These things are very deceptive. It doesn't look that far away, but we're only 65% of the way up...... We still have about 680mbar of air here, but only 500 at the summit (that's HALF the air. you get very very stupid with half the O2)
We drive to 14000 feet tomorrow.