Mauna Kea Summit Adventures

Mauna Kea Summit Adventures MKSA operates tours on a daily basis to Mauna Kea volcano for sunset and stargazing activities.

Since 1983, MKSA has been the pioneer guide service on Hawaiʻi’s Mauna Kea, offering expertly guided summit sunset & stargazing adventures with 4×4 transport, cultural & natural history, and powerful telescopes. We are one of the most experienced and respected ground-tour companies in Hawaii. Visitors will find our tours very informative, extremely scenic, and comfortable.

Another edition of Memories from the Mountain…Four archival frames captured on film of one of Mauna Kea’s most unusual r...
09/14/2026

Another edition of Memories from the Mountain…

Four archival frames captured on film of one of Mauna Kea’s most unusual residents — the Mauna Kea silversword, or ʻāhinahina.

These are a distinct subspecies found only on Mauna Kea, and they can spend decades growing before they finally flower. Some have been documented taking as long as 30 years or more to reach that stage.

A couple of these photos caught the plants near the end of that flowering cycle. A rosette gets just one shot at it — it sends up its flower stalk, produces seed, and then that rosette dies back. Some Mauna Kea silverswords grow multiple rosettes, allowing other parts of the plant to continue and flower later.

Pretty amazing when you realize the flowering stage captured in these old photos may have been decades in the making.

In our next edition of Memories from the Mountain…This isn’t just a beautiful Mauna Kea sunset.Do you notice anything mi...
09/10/2026

In our next edition of Memories from the Mountain…
This isn’t just a beautiful Mauna Kea sunset.
Do you notice anything missing?
There’s a pretty significant clue in this old film photo that helps us date it to likely 1989 or 1990. Take a close look before reading the answer.
We’ll put the story in the first comment.

In this edition of Memories from the Mountain…Stargazing then and now.The first photo shows Pat with guests utilizing on...
09/08/2026

In this edition of Memories from the Mountain…

Stargazing then and now.
The first photo shows Pat with guests utilizing one of our earlier wedge-mounted Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope setups. The second is our stargazing program today, using 11-inch Celestron CPC 1100 telescopes.
Obviously, the equipment has come a long way. What we haven’t moved away from is good old-fashioned Visual astronomy. Camera-equipped and electronically assisted telescopes can do some incredible things these days, but there’s still something pretty special about looking through an eyepiece yourself and knowing the photons reaching your eye came from the object you’re actually looking at. We still value that direct experience.
And the old photo deserves a little credit too — taken on film, with the customers lit up and a surprising number of stars still showing in the background.

Memories from the MountainThis restored photo takes us back to the early years of Mauna Kea Summit Adventures. That’s fo...
09/06/2026

Memories from the Mountain

This restored photo takes us back to the early years of Mauna Kea Summit Adventures. That’s founder Pat Wright at roughly 11,800 feet on Mauna Kea, near the glacial moraine along the upper Summit Access Road and the edge of the Mauna Kea Ice Age Natural Area Reserve. Beside him is one of the early vehicles in our company fleet, an 83 Chevrolet Suburban carrying the old Paradise Safaris name.

The location is one of the more interesting parts of the photo. Today, this is right in the area (VLBA Road) where the long gravel section of the summit road ends and the pavement begins. When this picture was taken, that upper pavement wasn’t there yet.

When we began operating in 1983, the road from Hale Pōhaku toward the summit was gravel all the way up. Road improvements were planned through the 1980s, and the upper section from roughly the 11,800-foot level on up was eventually paved in the early 1990s. Today, the first roughly 4.6 miles above Hale Pōhaku are still gravel, so the transition to pavement happens in essentially the same area shown in this photo.

The company itself was still pretty simple in those days. Pat started the operation in 1983 with a Land Cruiser, and vehicles like this Suburban became part of the fleet as things grew.

A lot has changed since then — the vehicles, the equipment, the road, and the scale of the operation — but we’re still making the same basic journey up Mauna Kea more than forty years later.

We’ve been scanning and restoring old photographs like this one, and over the coming months we’ll be sharing more of them along with the people, vehicles, places, and stories behind what was happening at the time.

🌌☄️ The Andromeda Galaxy rising as a meteor from the recent Perseid meteor shower streaks past.A fleeting visitor disint...
09/06/2026

🌌☄️ The Andromeda Galaxy rising as a meteor from the recent Perseid meteor shower streaks past.

A fleeting visitor disintegrating in our atmosphere, captured alongside a sliver of light representing more than a trillion stars some 2.5 million light-years away.

The light from Andromeda began its journey toward us long before Hawaiʻi Island even existed. ✨

📷 Captured by one of our guides, Mike, from the west side of Mauna Kea.

From the archives. 🔭This photo was snapped by one of our guides back in 2014. Occasionally, we’ll set up a telescope on ...
09/06/2026

From the archives. 🔭

This photo was snapped by one of our guides back in 2014. Occasionally, we’ll set up a telescope on the summit to get an early look at planets that will have dipped below the horizon by the time we begin our formal stargazing program later in the evening.

"Can I get a photo through the telescope?"Honest answer: sometimes. The moon isn't above the horizon on every night we r...
09/03/2026

"Can I get a photo through the telescope?"

Honest answer: sometimes. The moon isn't above the horizon on every night we run, and even when it is, it depends on the conditions and how much room the night leaves us. We can't promise it.

But Michele Baker caught this one with us — iPhone, no adapter, just held up to the eyepiece. She was kind enough to say we could share it. Glad she did.

We've been running this tour since 1983 and somehow never introduced the crew.So here they are. The guides who make driv...
09/02/2026

We've been running this tour since 1983 and somehow never introduced the crew.

So here they are. The guides who make driving to 13,796 feet look easy. The reservations team, who spent the last stretch on the phone rearranging plans nobody wanted rearranged. The maintenance and office folks who keep the vans, the parkas, and the telescopes ready every afternoon, whether the mountain cooperates or not.

There are also guides who aren't in this picture — the ones who were running this road long before some of us showed up, and who figured out most of how this tour actually works. Mahalo to them.

The weather and road closures had the last word for a while there. Now it's open, we're running, and we're ready to get you up there.

Above the weather, below the stars.
05/11/2026

Above the weather, below the stars.

Address

PO BOX 9027
Kailua-Kona, HI
96745

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 6pm
Tuesday 8am - 6pm
Wednesday 8am - 6pm
Thursday 8am - 6pm
Friday 8am - 6pm
Saturday 8am - 6pm
Sunday 8am - 6pm

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