Hawai'i Landscapes- Mauna Kea

Mauna Kea was such an otherworldly experience I think it deserves its own dedicated blog post. For those who don’t know, Mauna Kea is an inactive volcano on the Big Island of Hawai’i, and from land to summit it is 13,800ft. above sea level! Unfortunately half of the volcano is in the Pacific Ocean so Mount Everest is still considered the tallest mountain in the world (29,032ft. base to summit), otherwise if we are including the part of the volcano in the ocean to summit, Mauna Kea is technically 33,481ft. tall.

In planning our trip to Hawai’i the number 1 thing on our to-do list was to go up the volcano. There are some things that you need to plan ahead if you are making the trek yourself (otherwise there are plenty of tour companies that can bring you up, and will prep you accordingly):

  1. Having a 4WD vehicle is mandatory, you will be turned away if you do not have one. If renting a car, double check your agreement— most of the road up to the summit is unpaved and on rough terrain so lots of rentals do not allow you to take their cars up. For this reason we rented a truck on Turo and double checked with our renter ahead of time.

  2. Along with this you must have a full tank of gas— you will use lots of gas going up and down, and the nearest station is 50km away.

  3. You must stop at the visitors centre (9,2000ft) for at least 30 minutes to acclimate to the altitude change.

  4. Be weary of altitude sickness; it only gets worse the longer you continue, and can only get better by descending.

  5. You can only stay on the summit for about 30 minutes after sunset before a ranger escorts everyone down. Again, the road is unpaved, rough, and unlit. You can, however, continue stargazing near the visitors centre for as long as you’d like.

  6. Despite it being about 30C around the island, bring a jacket, pants, and layers for the summit! It was about 4C when we were there, and was getting cooler as the sun set.

We took a couple of side quests on this journey, the first being a quick hike up Pu’u Huluhulu quite literally right across the street from Mauna Kea’s access road. Just over 1km loop with 150m elevation gain, this short trip gives you beautiful view of the surrounding area from what felt like high up at the time lol. Another quest was nearly to summit; a 2km out and back ‘walk’ to Lake Waiau. Don’t let the 2km fool you though, this unmarked, unpaved, but very clear and easy to follow, trail is 13,000ft. above sea level and is much, much, harder than it sounds because of how thin the air is.

Much like trying to describe Hawai’i and it’s landscapes in general, I feel as though as most words will not do this justice. It really is a ‘you had to be there’ kind of thing. This was truly a once in a lifetime experience that we are so privileged to have both experienced, in addition to having these beautiful photos to commemorate it.

Landscapes below are available as prints— send us an email for more info! Click the photos below to enlarge and browse through.

Hawai'i Landscapes

Winter is always a time for us to refresh and reset but admittedly winter in Toronto is fairly drab so we always like to take some time off as a way to feel renewed. In years past we go all in on winter; take a long drive up north, bury ourselves in snow, and have some wine by the fire every night for a week straight. This year we wanted to change things up though. After working (and missing) most of summer, this winter we wanted to head somewhere warm. We have been talking about Hawai’i for a while— Ethan loved a trip to Maui he took years ago— so this year we finally said, let’s skip winter for a couple of weeks!

After some research we opted to go to the Island of Hawai’i, also known as Big Island, as in the largest— but interestingly youngest— of the Hawaiian Islands. There were a few key things that we wanted to do on this trip: Summit Mauna Kea, Papakōlea (Green Sand) Beach, and to hit up some black sand beaches. We’re happy to report that we did cover all of these things, and more!

We decided to stay on the less touristy side of the island near Hilo (we stayed in Pāhoa), instead of Kona, as it was closer to the attractions we wanted to go to. Unfortunately, Hilo in February is the more temperamental time of year with rolling rain, cloudy days, bigger waves, and cooler temperatures but in the end it worked out really well for us. Our first week was our ‘adventure week’ where we covered Mauna Kea, Papakōlea, Volcano National Park, Waimea, Waipio Valley, even taking a shelter dog on a field trip for the day from the Hawaiian Humane Society! We also lucked out having the beautiful Kehana Black Sand beach a short drive away from our AirBnB, which we absolutely made sure to visit every. single. day. Our last week was filled with nothing but sunshine and warm weather so it turned into our beach days where we started and finished our books, lounged around, and took in every last drop of sunshine before returning home to winter.

I don’t think I have enough words to describe how beautiful this trip was. Even Ethan said that he enjoyed it more than Maui (for different reasons!) Having so many landscapes— from the ocean, to tropical rainforests, incredible volcano-scapes (mountain like landscapes, but you know… with a volcano). Going from the water front to 2000+ft above sea level just driving across the highway; one moment you’re swimming, the next you’re quite literally driving through a cloud. In trying to capture this trip in one word, majestic, incredible, surreal, are all adjectives that fall short. Just know that we will be back, I simply cannot imagine a life where we don’t return.

Landscapes below are available as prints— send us an email for more info! Click the photos below to enlarge and browse through.

Landscapes from BC

As a first time BC visiter I (Stef) was asked constantly ‘how do you like it, are you enjoying it?’ and my answer to everyone was, ‘my little city brain can’t comprehend all of this (insert hand motion gesturing to the surrounding area)’. And the funny part is that everyone understood what I meant! I never realized that I hadn’t been around mountains until the first time we were in France, driving in Provence through mountains. Suddenly I was like, ‘wtf is all of this, these aren’t just big hills!?’ and BC very much felt like that but x1000. Being a city gal who’s countryside experience is just going up to the cottage for a handful of weeks a year, having the easiest access to waterfronts, to beautiful scenery, to be able to simply say ‘let’s watch the sunset from the top of the mountain tonight’ and to only put a minimal amount of effort to get there (some spots even in peoples backyard?!) was really astonishing to me!

So of course we had to document it. We’re always on the fence about what gear to bring, if any, when we travel. A couple of years ago we invested in a Fuji X100V to be our dedicated every day / travel camera; it’s light and compact, great quality, and still allows you to shoot in manual mode. Our biggest hang up about having cameras when we travel is that our serious gear is big, is heavy, is clunky, and no one wants to be lugging that around all day, but the Fuji is so slim it easily fits in a sling bag that it feels like there is no excuse to not have it on us at all times.

Since we were doing a couple of actual shoots in BC we did bring our serious gear (a whole packed Pelican, actually) so some of these photos are actually taken with a Nikon Z6II, some with a Fuji X100V.

Click the photos below to enlarge through