Riding The Snow and Clouds of Hawaii

There are two helicopter companies at Kona Airport and both of them just got brand new aircraft. And last week we had a strong cold front that dropped a good coating of snow on our two majestic mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. The owner of Mauna Loa has been waiting ten years to get photos of one of his helicopters airborne with the snow of Hawaii in the background.

I got the call at 8:00 AM asking if I was up for the assignment. Of course I was and by 8:30 we had a team in place and headed for the thin cold air of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

Any pilot types out there can see from this shot hat we are approaching 11,000 feet and the temperature is 25 degrees with a freezing wind blowing through the windowless cockpit.

My fellow photographer Mike Darden and I flew two choppers to the slopes of Mauna Loa to shoot the R66 and then each of us climbed into one of the new birds and we headed for Mauna Kea with a stop atop Hualalai to get some shots of the R66 over the smaller mountains craters.

At one point Dan, the pilot, decided we needed to make a max power climb at 13,000' while I was shooting from the open door in the freezing air!

Mahalo,

Brian