Journey to the Top of the World's Biggest Mountain

And I didn't have to go to the Himalayas to do it.

If you were to include the depth to the sea floor, Mauna Loa is technically the tallest mountain in the world (and has the largest volume by far). The summit is located at 13,679 ft, and in order to climb to Moku`aweoweo (the caldera) and return in one day, we started at ~11,000 ft and hiked 4 miles up to the caldera. Here's the view of Mauna Kea from the start of our hike on Mauna Loa.

In the Hawaiian language, moku`aweoweo roughly translates to "burning red area," or it could be named after a red big-eyed fish. Who knows.

The trail is marked by stone cairns, called ahu, so every so often we'd take a break. That's Fred in the background.

A cool feature near the big cairn!

This was my favorite part of the trail. The goldish-brownish material is mostly basaltic pumice from a lava fountain during the last Mauna Loa eruption in 1984, but there are also some pumice chunks where the gas bubbles were elongated and the colors were metallic blue, teal-ish, red, blue-green, and orange.

Finally, we got to the caldera! I felt pretty tough, especially considering the high altitude. It took us about 4.5 hours to hike to the caldera, but only 2.5 hours to hike down. Thanks, gravity.

We were pretty tired after lunch...

Here's all of us at the caldera! From the left: Erin, me, Katie, and Fred.