A few weeks ago I a guy that I’ve been meeting up with and going for motorcycle rides asked if I would be up for seeing if the bikes would make it up Mauna Kea. I immediately said Yes. Since being out on this island I have always wanted to rip up the desolate landscape of Mauna Kea. Since I’ve owned my two Yamahas, there has been a lot of protests and drama that was to do with the TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope) Project, which unfortunately had shut down access to Mauna Kea Road. Well, that recently settled down and the gov. opened up the road again. They do have a guard that will only allow a certain amount of people up at a time etc… But we went for it.
This adventure started with a fuel up at Costco. Then we ripped through the upper highway area towards saddle road. Dan had just done a modification to his carburetor and also put some bad gas in his bike. We quickly learned after fueling up that this was going to pose a problem. The modification was an adjustable mixture screw, which allows you to adjust the mixture at a higher altitude, ultimately making his carbureted bike to make it to the wildly almost 14,000-foot summit. Off and on his bike would sputter and cut out. Causing us to stop and fiddle, shake the bike to try and mix the bad gas with the good. But to no help, it kept going. We eventually just decided to keep going, even though at certain points he had to ride slowly on the median just to keep his bike running.
The ride up was awesome. Of course, we had to stop at the visitor’s center for about 30 minutes to get acclimated for the altitude. Dan showed me some off-road trails on a map that he had been on. Makes me want to get a dirtbike. Once we got clearance from the guard to go up we were on our way. He did take our license plates down for some reason. Maybe just incase we go plummeting to our demise off the side of the gravel road. My FZ8 has quite a bit of torque, so on the dirt road, I felt like a rally racer. The rear end was swinging out from each side and throwing up a plume of dirt and rocks. If I remember right, the last time I was up to the summit of Mauna Kea was in 2016 when I had my Honda CRV.
This was the perfect day to go on this adventure. Open, Clear blue sky. Nobody on the road, and nobody at the observatory. Here are some pictures. Video to come soon.
