I went up to Haleakala Crater yesterday. This was my third visit. The first time, in 1985, knowing the temperature was 30 degrees colder than at sea level, I took a set of warm clothing for hiking. But I also took a ski jacket! A friend dropped me off at the airport in Denver on a snowy morning, and I forgot to give the jacket to him to take back to the weather office, so I had to cram it into my suitcase in the checkin line. Well, I got up here, and the temperature was 50 degrees with a 50 mph wind, and I put on my ski jacket in Hawaii, and I was comfortable while all the tourons were freezing! This time no serious hiking was planned, and I simply wore a sweatshirt; it was again only 50 degrees, but with light winds. By the way, on my second visit to the crater about 10 years ago, it was fogged in; didn't see much of anything. Yesterday was a beautiful day, and the crater was fantastic.

This is one of the few places in the world where you climb almost two miles virtually straight up from sea level. As my friend said, it's like being in an airplane when you're at the top, at Pu'u Ulaula.

Haleakala is a power spot. The landscape is variegated, stark, and otherworldly.

The silversword grows here, and nowhere else. Like the yucca, the plant assumes this aspect for a long time...around 50 years...then blooms spectacularly once, then dies.

Haleakala used to be much larger...a huge shield volcano like Mauna Loa. Over the millenia the summit eroded away, then new eruptions produced the cinder cones in the crater. There have been several eruptions in the past thousand years, the last in the late 1700s.