Mauna Kea: A Guide to Hawaii's Sacred Mountain - Softcover

Leslie Lang is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Pepeekeo on the Hilo Coast. David A. Byrne is the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Manager.

Mauna Kea is a special place — sacred to Hawaiians because of its significance to their culture, and sacred to astronomers because of the exceptional seeing conditions. A trip to the Hawaiian Islands by anyone with an interest in astronomy should include a visit to Hawaii (the Big Island) in order to see the observatories and to experience the observing conditions at the summit of Mauna Kea.

Mauna Kea: A Guide to Hawaiis Sacred Mountain is an excellent resource for planning such an adventure and for understanding the mountain. The authors of the Guide are locals to the Big Island. David A. Byrne is the manager of the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station that is located about 1.4 km below the summit at Hale Pohaku. Leslie Lang is a writer who lives on a slope of Mauna Kea. The Guide is divided into nine chapters: Visit Mauna Kea, The Sacred Mountain, Natural History, Recreation, Visitor Information Station, Astronomy on Mauna Kea, Maunakea Discovery Center, The Future, and Resources.

The first chapter carefully outlines all that a traveller needs to know about conditions at the summit and how to get there. It lists and describes natural and historical sites that one can see and/or explore along the road leading to the summit. The importance of the mountain in Hawaiian culture is sensitively treated in the second chapter. It is important to appreciate that the Hawaiians are truly generous in permitting the astronomical community to use the summit for research.

The Guide is filled with many photographs, of which some are magnificent examples of what awaits. There are four maps: Island of Hawaii, Summit Area, Cultural and Religious Sites, and Observatories and Facilities. The maps are useful in finding many of the locations mentioned in the text. Unfortunately, the Cultural and Religious Sites map is very sketchy and extremely difficult to relate to the other maps and to the text. Perhaps a future edition of the Guide will improve the map since much of the discussion in Chapter 2 relates to it. Overall, the Guide will be very useful for visiting Mauna Kea. I wish that it had been available during the year that I spent living on the Big Island. It would have enriched my understanding and appreciation of Mauna Kea. I plan to use it during my next visit to locate the Adze Quarry near the summit that I did not even know existed. --Richard Bochonko, ""Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada"