Maui Mountain Cruisers - Sunrise From The Top of Haleakala
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Maui Mountain Cruisers - Sunrise From The Top of Haleakala
Every sunrise is as unique as a set of fingerprints. No two are ever the same and so when you pick a day to go up to the top of Mount Haleakala on Maui to view the sunrise and take a bike trip down to sea level, you never know what you are going to get. On an unusually warm November morning my son Jake and I boarded a van from our office headquarters in Kahului which picked us up at 3:30am to go off with Maui Mountain Cruisers on one of the sunrise tours that they have given countless times over the past decades. The stars were out from our vantage point at sea level although we could barely see the wisps of a cloud-cover that seemed to be holding firm over the northern coast of the island. Our assent to the mountain top in the dark hours of the morning was uneventful except for a somewhat determined yet very light mist that didn't really even require the swish of a windshield wiper to highlight our view. Upon our arrival at the crater summit we were met with an astounding starlight display to the west and to the east facing the crater we could see a wall of clouds that covered the crater floor and appeared as a wall extending high above us to the horizon. We set up our video camera to capture whatever sunrise might avail itself and had it well in focus by about 5:45am. Knowing that sunrises all have a unique quality we decided to simply train the camera on the spot where the sun would hopefully eventually pop out with its attendant colors of the spectrum. For a full 45 minutes we kept our lens open to the possibility of the fantastic heavenly spectacle that sunrises at Haleakala are so famous for and our efforts 45 minutes later drew us no closer to the prize. In fact, the wall of clouds had only risen higher and grown closer and began to gently envelope us in its fine mist and by 6:30am we could barely even make out the rim of the crater that fell away just before us only yards away. A bit disillusioned we packed up our tripod and camera and headed down the volcanic cinder cone we had so deftly just climbed in the dark an hour before which was adjacent to the observation platform at the edge of the parking lot which was packed with many other hopeful sunrise observers. We made our way back to the Maui Mountain Cruisers van we came up in and began to stow our gear when our driver Chuck told us to turn around and see that the sun had just broken through. We ran back to the craters edge with a renewed gusto and were amazed to see that the entire horizon, crater and all had just exploded into the most glorious of sunbursts. The sun's rays reached out to touch all points far and near and the full pallet of natures was evident everywhere. We had just a couple minutes to capture what we could of the sunrise and we were off to enjoy our descent to Paia town on the North Shore of Maui. As it turned out we could have kicked ourselves for not keeping our camera focused for just another ten minutes to earn our morning reward. Maui is ever changing and you just never know what lays in store for you but one thing for sure is that it is always "magic".
