Saddle Road Hawaii

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Hilo

   Rain is the first fact about Hilo. The town gets well over a hundred inches a year, making it one of the wettest cities in the United States, and the rain is what turned this side of the Big Island into a lush tangle of ferns, orchids, bamboo and waterfalls. Hilo is a low, tidy, slightly faded town of forty thousand people curved around a bay, with old wooden shopfronts, a farmers market that sprawls across several blocks, and the vast shoulder of Mauna Kea rising unseen behind its cloud.

   Read the complete Hilo write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Hilo is where the day begins. Next is Mauna Kea Access Road junction.

2. 2. Mauna Kea Access Road junction

   Nobody tells you how empty the middle of Hawaii is. The Saddle Road runs between two enormous volcanoes, Mauna Kea to the north and Mauna Loa to the south, across a high plateau of lava, scrub and cloud, and the access road to the Mauna Kea visitor station leaves it at a junction that is easy to miss. There is no town, no cafe, just a turning and a ridge of dark cinder cones. Everything on this island looks smaller than it should, because the mountains are so large that they do not look like mountains at all.

   Read the complete Mauna Kea Access Road junction write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Mauna Kea Access Road junction comes up about 54 km into the recorded legs. Next is Saddle summit.

3. 3. Saddle summit

   At 2,020 metres, the high point of the Saddle Road is a spot where the Big Island makes you feel its scale. You are on a broad, tilted plateau between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, and everything around you is volcanic: black lava from flows within recent human memory, scrubby grass, a few pale ohia trees, and a sky that can be absolutely blue or absolutely gone, depending on which minute you arrive.

   Read the complete Saddle summit write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 97 km into the recorded legs you reach Saddle summit. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Waimea, mostly downhill.

4. 4. Waimea

   Waimea is cowboy country, and that is a strange thing to find on a tropical island. The town, also known by its postal name Kamuela, lies on a high, cool, windy plateau at about twenty-five hundred feet, between the Kohala Mountains and the huge bulk of Mauna Kea. The land is open grass, dotted with eucalyptus windbreaks, cattle and horses, and on a misty morning it looks a lot more like Scotland or Wyoming than Hawaii.

   Read the complete Waimea write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Waimea closes the day.