Is Mauna Kea a Volcano?

Yes. Mauna Kea is a volcano — specifically a dormant, post-shield-stage shield volcano that the USGS says last erupted “between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago” and classifies as a Moderate Threat, the lowest tier occupied by any of the Big Island’s active volcanoes. Dormant is not extinct, and the USGS is unambiguous about the difference: “Mauna Kea last erupted about 4,500 years ago and is likely to erupt again.” It is also, measured base to summit, the tallest mountain on Earth — around 33,500 ft from its Pacific seafloor base against Everest’s 29,032 ft above sea level — though Everest remains the highest, Mauna Loa is more massive, and Chimborazo’s summit sits farthest from Earth’s centre. Those are four different superlatives belonging to four different mountains, and the internet conflates them constantly.

What this means for a visitor is simple and worth saying early: there is no lava to see at Mauna Kea. That is Kīlauea’s job. What you go up for is snow, cinder cones, glacial landforms that exist nowhere else in Hawaii, the best stargazing on Earth, and a summit that is sacred to Native Hawaiians as the firstborn of Wākea and Papa.

Dormant, Not Extinct — and the Difference Matters

Mauna Kea is a basaltic shield volcano in the post-shield stage of the Hawaiian volcanic life cycle, and the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory classifies it as dormant. The three-way distinction is not pedantry:

• Active — has erupted recently and/or shows current unrest. Kīlauea, Mauna Loa.
• Dormant — has not erupted in a long time but is expected to erupt again, and is still monitored. Mauna Kea.
• Extinct — is not expected to erupt again. Kohala, the island’s oldest volcano.

When it last erupted. Sources vary, and the variation is real rather than sloppy. The USGS Mauna Kea “Quick Facts” box gives the most recent eruption as “Between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago.” The USGS “Mauna Kea Will Erupt Again” page and multiple HVO Volcano Watch articles round that to “about 4,500 years ago.” The Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program describes “the most recent eruptive period, 6,000–4,000 years ago,” which “involved eight vents on the south flank of the volcano between Kalaʻiʻeha cone (near Humuʻula) and Puʻukole.” The oldest exposed lavas on the volcano are about 250,000 years old. The single best statement is therefore: Mauna Kea’s most recent eruptive period ran roughly 6,000 to 4,000 years ago, commonly summarised as ~4,500 years ago.

How dangerous is it? Under the USGS National Volcano Early Warning System, Mauna Kea ranks Moderate Threat Potential — the lowest of the three tiers the Big Island’s active volcanoes occupy. On this island, Kīlauea and Mauna Loa are Very High Threat, Hualālai is High Threat, and Haleakalā on Maui and Mauna Kea are Moderate. Kamaʻehuakanaloa (formerly Lōʻihi) is Not Ranked. Nationally, the 2018 USGS threat assessment put Kīlauea at number one.

What a future eruption would look like. The USGS notes that Mauna Kea’s “quiescent periods between eruptions are long compared to those of the active volcanoes Hualālai (which erupts every few hundred years), Mauna Loa (which erupts every few years to few tens of years) and Kīlauea (which erupts every few years).” The Smithsonian’s forecast is specific: “The next eruption will likely produce a lava flow, because each eruption in the past 60,000 years has done so. The longest flows will reach 15–25 km (9–15 miles) downslope. Most of each flow will be ʻaʻā… A prominent cinder cone will probably be constructed at each vent.” Future vents would most likely open on the flanks, as the 6,000-to-4,000-year-ago vents did on the south and northeast sides.

What the instruments are hearing right now. HVO monitors Mauna Kea with one GPS instrument and three seismometers on the volcano itself, plus instruments on neighbouring Kohala and much denser networks on Mauna Loa. There is no eruptive unrest. But the mountain is not seismically silent, and what it is doing is genuinely remarkable. A 2020 study in Science (Wech, Thelen & Thomas, v.368, pp.775–779, 15 May 2020, DOI 10.1126/science.aba4798) reported: “We observed a near-periodic, long-lived sequence of more than one million DLPs [deep long-period earthquakes] in the past 19 years beneath the dormant postshield Mauna Kea volcano… caused by repeated pressurization of volatiles exsolved through crystallization of cooling magma stalled beneath the crust.” These magnitude-1.5-ish events repeat every 7 to 12 minutes at 20 to 25 km depth beneath the summit. They are not eruption precursors. They are the signature of a deep body of cooling, stalled magma undergoing “second boiling” — a magma system winding down rather than gearing up. The USGS adds a pleasing footnote: the summit’s astronomical telescopes are so sensitive to ground tilt that they would, as a byproduct, detect the minute deformation that might foretell a future eruption.

How Mauna Kea Was Built: the Hotspot Story

Mauna Kea, like every Hawaiian volcano, was built by the Hawaiian hotspot — a plume of hot material rising from deep in the mantle. The Pacific Plate drifts northwest over this roughly stationary plume at about 9 cm a year per the USGS (the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park page gives a rounder ~6 cm/year), so each volcano is rafted off the hotspot and goes dormant, then extinct, while a new one grows behind it. The product is the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, running nearly 6,000 km to the roughly 80-million-year-old Detroit Seamount, with a famous 60° bend dated to about 47 million years ago and attributed to a combination of changing Pacific Plate motion and hotspot drift.

Mauna Kea sits on the southern flank of older Kohala’s eastern rift zone. Per the USGS its rapid-growth shield stage “lasted for about 800,000 years, so Mauna Kea is probably at least 1 million years old,” and that stage built more than 90% of its volume. It probably broke the sea surface roughly 800,000 years ago. Its neighbours, oldest to youngest, run Kohala (extinct, last erupted ~120,000 years ago), Mauna Kea, Hualālai, Mauna Loa and Kīlauea, with the submarine Kamaʻehuakanaloa emerging off the south coast as the next Hawaiian volcano in the making. The Big Island is built from five volcanoes, or six if you count the submerged Mahukona.

The Four-Stage Life Cycle, and Why Mauna Kea Looks Like That

Hawaiian shield volcanoes pass through four stages, and Mauna Kea’s position in that cycle explains everything about its appearance:

1. Pre-shield (submarine) — early, infrequent eruptions build a seamount. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is here today.
2. Shield-building — high magma supply, fluid tholeiitic basalt, gentle slopes, 90%-plus of the volume built. Mauna Loa and Kīlauea are here now.
3. Post-shield — magma supply drops sharply; lavas become more alkalic, viscous and gas-rich; eruptions grow less frequent but more explosive, building tall cinder cones and steepening the whole edifice. Mauna Kea is here — the USGS pins it precisely as “advanced-postshield stage, hawaiitic substage.”
4. Rejuvenated — after a long pause, sporadic small eruptions may resume, as on the older islands.

The USGS gives four lines of evidence that Mauna Kea has left the shield stage: very low eruption rates compared with Mauna Loa and Kīlauea; the absence of a summit caldera and long fissure vents; steeper, more irregular topography, with upper flanks “twice as steep as those of Mauna Loa”; and different lava chemistry.

Two geologic formations record the story:

• Hāmākua Volcanics — alkalic and transitional basalt erupted roughly 250,000 to 65,000 (or 70,000) years ago, about 850 km³ of lava, forming most of the surface on the lower and middle slopes.
• Laupāhoehoe Volcanics — younger, more evolved hawaiite and mugearite lavas with prominent cinder cones and ʻaʻā flows, roughly 65,000 to 4,000 years ago, but only about 25 km³ of lava. The most recent Laupāhoehoe activity was that 6,000-to-4,000-year-ago cluster. These cones and flows are what make the summit rugged and irregular where Mauna Loa next door is smooth.

For a sense of how quiet the mountain has become: its shield-stage supply rate was about 0.05 km³/yr. Hāmākua dropped to ~0.005. Laupāhoehoe to ~0.0004. Kīlauea, by comparison, supplies about 0.1 km³/yr — roughly 250 times Mauna Kea’s most recent rate.

Other Experiences You Might Enjoy

The geology on this page is mostly something you go and stand in: the cinder cones of the summit plateau, the glacial moraines along the Humuʻula Trail and the Mauna Kea Ice Age Natural Area Reserve, the alpine desert above the Visitor Information Station, and — for the lava this mountain does not have — Kīlauea and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, with Nāhuku lava tube and the crater overlooks, an hour or so south of the mountain’s own access road. Worth a look before you fix the itinerary.

Taller Than Everest — the Claim, Examined Properly

This is the fun one, and it is worth getting exactly right.

• Height above sea level: the USGS lists 4,207 m (13,803 ft). The University of Hawaii and Center for Maunakea Stewardship, along with most astronomy sources, use 4,205 m (13,796 ft). Both describe the same summit — see the verification notes at the foot of this page.
• Depth of base below sea level: roughly 19,700 ft (6,000 m).
• Total base-to-summit height: roughly 33,500 ft (~10,200 m).
• Everest: 29,032 ft (8,849 m) above sea level.

So from seafloor base to summit, Mauna Kea is more than a kilometre — over 4,000 ft — taller than Everest. By that definition it is the tallest mountain on Earth.

Honesty requires naming the other three superlatives, because they belong to other mountains:

• Highest, meaning summit elevation above sea level: Mount Everest, unchallenged at 29,032 ft.
• Tallest, base to summit: Mauna Kea.
• Most massive, by volume: Mauna Loa, not Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea’s volume is about 42,000 km³; Mauna Loa’s about 95,000 km³, roughly 55% larger. In fact the USGS describes Mauna Loa as the taller one when the full volcanic pile is measured from the depressed seafloor beneath it — the islands’ immense weight presses the oceanic crust downward, the Pacific Plate sagging under the load and flexing back up about 100 miles offshore at the Hawaiian Arch. Measured from that “true base,” the total is greater still than the standard 33,500 ft.
• Farthest from Earth’s centre: Chimborazo, in Ecuador. Because Earth bulges at the equator, Chimborazo’s summit sits about 2,072 m (roughly 6,800 ft) farther from the planet’s core than Everest’s, per NOAA — even though Chimborazo stands only 6,263 m above sea level.

One more thing the numbers reveal. The two Hawaiian giants are very nearly the same height above the water, and the USGS puts it neatly: “Tall cinder cones atop the summit of Mauna Kea and lava flows that underlie its steep upper flanks have built the volcano a scant 35 m (115 ft) higher than nearby Mauna Loa.”

Snow, Ice and a Mountain That Once Had Glaciers

Why there is snow in Hawaii is simply altitude: at nearly 14,000 ft the summit is high enough that winter storms drop snow rather than rain. The name says so — Mauna Kea means “White Mountain.” In Hawaiian tradition it is also Mauna a Wākea, the Mountain of Wākea.

The season and the events. Snow typically falls between roughly November and March, with a broader ski window at the margins. The Lyman Museum notes that the James Cook expedition recorded snow on Maunakea as early as 1778. The National Weather Service issues blizzard warnings for the summit and has recorded gusts up to about 120 mph there. Recent notable falls: more than 10 inches in 2021, and a record of more than two feet in 2016. Heavy snow and ice routinely force the Center for Maunakea Stewardship to close the summit access road — and closures depend on wind, visibility and ice as much as on snow depth.

Skiing and snowboarding do happen, and it is expedition-style rather than resort skiing: no lifts, no grooming, no patrol, no rentals. Skiers use a 4WD vehicle as the lift, taking turns driving each other back up the summit road between runs. February and March generally offer the best snow. Runs can switch abruptly from snow to bare lava rock, and the combination of altitude, wind and fast-changing conditions makes it genuinely hazardous.

The snow goddess. In Hawaiian cosmology the snow belongs to Poliʻahu, one of the snow deities of Mauna Kea alongside Lilinoe, Waiau and Kahoupokane, and the antithesis and rival of the fire goddess Pele. Poliʻahu is described as a daughter of Wākea who dwells at the summit.

Permafrost. Mauna Kea is the only place in Hawaii with permafrost, first found in 1969 by University of Hawaii researcher Alfred Woodcock inside the craters of two summit cinder cones, Puʻuwēkiu and Puʻuhaukea, where radiationally cooled air pools at night and produces the coldest temperatures ever measured in Hawaii — below 0°F. It is shrinking. Research supported by UH Hilo’s Office of Maunakea Management and led by planetary scientist Norbert Schörghofer found the ice “shrunk by an order of magnitude between 1973 and 2015,” a change linked to a warming climate. In 1969 the ice at Puʻuwēkiu was about 11 yards thick and 27 yards long.

Glacial history. During the Ice Ages, ice caps repeatedly capped the summit. The classic four-stage sequence names the drifts, youngest to oldest: Makanaka, Waihu, Pōhakuloa and pre-Pōhakuloa. At the Last Glacial Maximum the ice cap covered about 70.5 km², when the snowline dropped some 930 m to roughly 3,785 m elevation. Cosmogenic ³⁶Cl dating shows the last two ice caps — Older and Younger Makanaka — retreated from their maximum positions about 23,000 and 13,000 years ago. This is why Mauna Kea is the only Hawaiian volcano with glacial moraines, striations and other glacial landforms still visible, some of them interbedded with lava flows and some created by eruptions beneath the ice itself.

Why Mauna Kea Looks Nothing Like Kīlauea

Visitors who arrive expecting glowing lava are sometimes surprised there is none. Here is the side-by-side:

The short version: Kīlauea is a young volcano still being built by runny lava. Mauna Kea is an aging volcano whose thicker, gassier eruptions built cinder cones and then largely stopped. If you want active lava, that means Kīlauea and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, and the one GetYourGuide product that pairs the two sides of the island in a single day is Wasabi Tours’ Big Island Volcano & Stargazing Tour with Dinner — $275, 4.8 stars across 195 reviews, a twelve-hour loop through the national park that finishes with stargazing from a lower-elevation pullout near Saddle Road rather than the summit. Our guide to Big Island volcano tours and Mauna Kea explains the current Kīlauea eruption status and why no legitimate tour delivers both the summit and the volcano in one day.

The Life That Lives Nowhere Else

Mauna Kea stacks distinct ecological zones by elevation, and several of the species in them exist on this mountain and on no other.

Māmane–naio subalpine forest (roughly 6,500–10,000 ft) is dominated by endemic māmane (Sophora chrysophylla) and naio (Myoporum sandwicense). It is the only home of the palila (Loxioides bailleui), a finch-billed, yellow-headed Hawaiian honeycreeper that takes about 90% of its diet from immature māmane seeds. Per Hawaiʻi DLNR’s Division of Forestry & Wildlife, “the species occupies approximately 10 percent of their historical range… Up to 96 percent of the population and nearly all successful breeding occurs in a 30 square kilometer (11.5 square mile) area on the southwestern slope of Mauna Kea.” The trajectory is alarming: a December 2025 USGS study found the palila had declined by more than 90% between 1998 and 2024; the 2022 count of 545 birds (range 367–742) was “the lowest in recorded history,” with 2024 estimated at roughly 666. The landmark lawsuit Palila v. Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources forced the removal of the feral sheep, goats and cattle that were destroying the forest.

Alpine stone desert (above roughly 11,000 ft) supports sparse lichens, mosses and algae under less than about 10 inches of precipitation a year.

The Mauna Kea silversword (ʻāhinahina, Argyroxiphium sandwicense ssp. sandwicense) is the crown jewel of the mountain — a rosette plant with silvery, reflective leaves that flowers once in a lifespan of decades and then dies. Feral ungulate browsing pushed it to the brink: the wild population fell to roughly 40 to 50 plants in one natural population. Reintroduction has since grown the total to about 8,000 plants on the mountain, with outplant survival above 85%. It remains federally listed as endangered.

The wēkiu bug (Nysius wekiuicola) is a flightless seed-bug relative that turned predator and scavenger, and it is found only in the summit cinder cones above about 11,700 ft. Discovered in 1979 by Howarth, Montgomery and Mull on Puʻu Wēkiu, it feeds on insects blown up from lower elevations and immobilised by the cold — the essence of the aeolian ecosystem, a community fuelled almost entirely by wind-deposited organic matter. A petition to list it as endangered was declined in 2011 after monitoring showed a stable but highly variable population.

What threatens all of it: invasive species — feral sheep, goats, cattle and mouflon, fire-prone invasive grasses, predatory ants — along with habitat loss and climate change, the shrinking permafrost included.

Lake Waiau, at about 13,020 ft inside the Puʻu Waiau cinder cone, is one of the highest lakes in the United States and a culturally sacred alpine feature; the summit access and driving guide covers reaching it.

The Geology You Can Actually Go and See

• Cinder cones (puʻu). The summit itself is a cluster of them — Puʻuwēkiu, the true summit and state high point, part of Puʻu o Kūkahauʻula; Puʻu Poliʻahu; Puʻu Waiau, which holds the lake; and, near the Visitor Information Station at 9,200 ft, Puʻu Kalepeamoa (“Sunset Hill”), an easy walk with sweeping Saddle views. Each cone marks a post-shield vent — direct evidence of the explosive, cone-building eruption style.
• Glacial moraines and striations. Ridges of till and polished, scratched rock surfaces record the Ice Age caps, visible especially on the Saddle Road side and along the Humuʻula Trail through the Mauna Kea Ice Age Natural Area Reserve. Our Humuʻula Trail guide covers walking among them, and is honest about how hard that walk is.
• Adze-quarry basalt. Dense, fine-grained lava that Hawaiians prized for tool-making, worked at what is one of the largest quarries of its kind anywhere.
• The alpine desert. A Mars-like expanse of red-brown cinder and tephra, which is exactly why it has stood in for Mars in more than one film.
• The inversion layer and the cloud sea. The summit sits above 40% of the Earth’s atmosphere, per the UH Institute for Astronomy. A tropical inversion cloud layer roughly 600 m (2,000 ft) thick sits well below it, isolating the upper atmosphere and delivering 300-plus clear nights a year along with the famous sea of clouds — the same mechanism that makes this the best observing site on the planet and the reason the observatories are up there at all.
• The panorama. On a clear day you can see Mauna Loa and Hualālai across the island and, over the channel, Haleakalā on Maui.

Mauna Kea’s Neighbours

The Big Island is built from five volcanoes. Mauna Kea’s siblings put its dormancy in context:

• Mauna Loa — the largest active volcano on Earth at about 95,000 km³, still shield-stage, Very High Threat. It erupted 27 November to 10 December 2022, its first since 1984, sending flows to within about 1.7 miles of Saddle Road. As of the USGS’s most recent updates it sits at the lowest alert level, Normal/Green, with slow post-eruption reinflation.
• Hualālai — post-shield, High Threat, last erupted in 1800–1801, when flows from its northwest rift zone reached the sea; the 1801 Huʻehuʻe flow underlies part of Kona International Airport. It typically erupts every few hundred years and poses a real and underappreciated hazard to the densely developed Kona coast. A damaging seismic swarm of around magnitude 6 struck in 1929.
• Kohala — the island’s oldest volcano and the only one considered extinct, last erupting about 120,000 years ago, and old enough to have recorded the 780,000-year-ago reversal of Earth’s magnetic field.
• Kamaʻehuakanaloa (formerly Lōʻihi) — the youngest, still submarine about 20 miles off the south coast with its summit some 975 m below sea level. Frequent earthquake swarms, notably in 1996, confirm it is active. It is the Big Island’s future.

The Mountain in Hawaiian Cosmology

To understand Mauna Kea you have to hold two truths at once. Geologically it is a post-shield hotspot volcano. Culturally, for Native Hawaiians (Kānaka Maoli), it is Mauna a Wākea, the piko — the umbilical cord, the navel — of Hawaiʻi Island, and one of the most sacred places in the islands.

In the Hawaiian creation account the earth mother Papahānaumoku and the sky father Wākea united; Hawaiʻi Island was their firstborn, and Mauna Kea, its highest summit, is the firstborn mountain son — the kupuna, the elder — and the point “that which connects the land to the heavens.” A birth chant records it: “O hānau ka mauna a Kea / ʻŌpuʻu aʻe ka mauna a Kea” — “Born of Kea was the mountain, the mountain of Kea budded forth.” The mountain is an ancestor, and its summit region, the wao akua or realm of the deities, was traditionally entered only by those prepared with proper conduct and ceremony. The snow is Poliʻahu’s white kapa, her cloak. The waters of Lake Waiau are associated with the god Kāne and used by practitioners. Families bring the piko of newborns to the mountain.

This dual identity — sacred landscape and premier scientific site — is central to understanding Mauna Kea and to the long-running debate over telescope development on the summit. The University of Hawaii’s Comprehensive Management Plan frames the goal as allowing these “two cultures [to] co-exist in such a way that is mutually respectful.” A respectful visitor recognises that the geology and the cosmology are not competitors: one explains how the mountain formed, the other what it means. If the cultural dimension is what draws you, the Mauna Kea Hike & Stargazing with a Native Hawaiian Guide — $150, 4.9 stars across 41 reviews, the highest-rated Mauna Kea product we track — walks the lower Humuʻula Trail to 9,394 ft and tells the sky through celestial navigation and Hawaiian tradition rather than through catalogue numbers.

What the Geology Means for Your Visit

• There is no lava to see here, and that is expected. The mountain is dormant and its last eruption was millennia ago. For active lava, go to Kīlauea and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.
• What you actually go for: the best stargazing on Earth, snow in winter, the alien alpine desert, cinder cones and glacial landforms, the cloud sea, and a profound sacred landscape. Our month-by-month night sky guide covers what is overhead on your dates, and the complete guide to Mauna Kea stargazing tours covers who takes you up there.
• The geology shapes the logistics. Those steep post-shield slopes and the high summit mean a demanding, unpaved, low-range-4WD road above 9,200 ft — covered in the summit access and driving guide. The elevation means real altitude risk: a rapid ascent from sea level causes acute mountain sickness in a large share of visitors. And the weather means cold, high wind and sometimes snow, closing the road at little notice.
• Plan around what the mountain is. Check summit conditions before you go, ascend slowly, acclimatise at the Visitor Information Station, and treat the place as both a scientific and a sacred site. If you are coming from the east side, our guide to Mauna Kea tours from Hilo has the operators and drive times; from the west, the Kona guide does the same.

What We’d Actually Do

• If your goal is to see lava, don’t come to Mauna Kea — go to Kīlauea and check the current HVO eruption status first. The benchmark that decides it: if HVO lists Kīlauea at Watch or Warning with active surface flows, that’s your lava trip.
• If your goal is snow, target December to March and check the Center for Maunakea Stewardship road status and the UH Institute for Astronomy summit forecast on the morning itself. The benchmark: if winds exceed safe thresholds or there is ice, the summit road closes regardless of how much snow has fallen.
• If your goal is stargazing or simply the summit, ascend slowly, acclimatise at the Visitor Information Station at 9,200 ft for at least 30 minutes, and use a low-range 4WD or a guided tour for the road above it. Anyone pregnant, under 16, in poor cardiovascular health, or who has scuba dived within 24 hours should not go to the summit at all.
• For everyone: treat Mauna Kea as both a scientific and a sacred place. Stay on the established roads and trails, don’t disturb cinder, shrines or the silversword enclosure, and read the cosmology section before you go rather than after.

What to Verify Before You Go

• Summit elevation — 13,803 ft versus 13,796 ft. Both describe the same summit benchmark. Per the NOAA National Geodetic Survey datasheet for station “SUMMIT” (PID TU2314), the current published orthometric height on local mean sea level under the GEOID12B model is 4,207.3 m = 13,803 ft, the figure the USGS uses, while the disk set in 1955 is stamped “13,796”, the older value carried forward by UH and astronomy sources. The roughly 7 ft difference is a survey-epoch and re-adjustment difference, not an NGVD 29 versus NAVD 88 datum switch — neither datum applies to Hawaii, which uses local mean sea level. Even the USGS is internally inconsistent, printing 13,796 on some pages and 13,803 on others.
• Last eruption date — 6,000, 4,500 or 4,000 years ago. USGS Quick Facts say “between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago”; USGS narrative pages and HVO say “about 4,500 years ago”; Smithsonian GVP describes a 6,000-to-4,000-year-ago eruptive period. These are not contradictions, just different ways of stating the same window.
• Total base-to-summit height — roughly 33,000 to 34,000 ft. Commonly cited as about 33,500 ft (10,200 m) with a base depth of about 19,700 ft (6,000 m). The figure varies with where the “base” is drawn, and if you measure from the depressed seafloor beneath the island’s load it is larger — by which measure the USGS calls Mauna Loa the tallest.
• Permafrost status. Documented since 1969 but shrinking — “shrunk by an order of magnitude between 1973 and 2015” per Schörghofer and colleagues at UH. Time-sensitive and climate-dependent.
• Palila population. The range figures — 10% of historical range, 96% of the population on about 30 km² — are DLNR baselines. The December 2025 USGS study reports a decline of more than 90% between 1998 and 2024, a record-low 2022 count of 545 birds and roughly 666 in 2024. This is a fast-moving and worsening situation.
• Current USGS alert levels, as of early to mid 2026. Mauna Kea: dormant, no eruptive alert level, Moderate Threat ranking. Mauna Loa and Kīlauea: Very High Threat, with Kīlauea having had repeated episodic summit eruptions through 2025 and 2026 and Mauna Loa sitting at Normal/Green. Alert levels change — check the USGS HVO site before you travel.
• Everything volcanic here is time-sensitive. This page reflects USGS and HVO information as of mid-2026. Confirm current conditions with HVO before travel. Ratings and review counts for the tours named above are the operators’ live GetYourGuide figures, checked 12 September 2026.

Two final notes. Some popular and tourism sources loosely call Mauna Kea “extinct.” That is simply wrong — the USGS classifies it as dormant and expects it to erupt again. And the cultural material on this page is a respectful summary drawn from University of Hawaii, Native Hawaiian and scholarly sources; it is not a substitute for Native Hawaiian voices and does not capture the full depth of the tradition.

This page is the geology explainer for the cluster. For what you can see from the summit and which observatories admit visitors, the road up, the hike, the night sky and the two sides of the island, see the observatories guide, the summit access guide, the Humuʻula Trail guide, the month-by-month night sky guide, the Hilo tours guide and the Kona tours guide respectively.