I'm at home in the clouds

19 miles and almost 9,000 ft of trail hiking later, I'm still alive. Hiking the Haleakala crater was a very memorable experience but at that it was one of the most challenging things I've ever done. My friends (Jay and Nelson) and me started our trek on Saturday morning with 4 hitch hike rides to Kaupo where the trail started, at maybe somewhere around 500 or so feet above sea level, we finished at the highest summit point on Haleakala, 10,000 ft above sea level! We were discouraged from going on our trek by park rangers and we were told we would give up and turn around but not for one second did we think twice about getting to our destination, we were also told not many hikers take the trail we decided to take because of the challenges it poses: private property in the way of the trail (in which case property owners could have also turned us away), short sunlight, and steep inclines. We passed various wildlife on our way to the top including wild boars!!! We finished our first day or trekking at close to 7,000 ft above sea level! All in one day! We set up our tent ASAP, I mean ASAP!!! The weather drops dramatically at night when you're so high up. We literally went from 80 degree weather or so at regular ground level to 30 degree weather at night! The next day we packed up and set out to finish our remaining few thousand feet of adventure. Everything we saw, heard, smelled, felt, was all too real, it was all stuff you would see on pictures or movies, not something I would think to be doing some day. We finished our crater trip right around 3:00pm and soon after were even lucky enough to get a ride back into Pa`ia, the closest town to where we live, from a couple from Germany who had only arrived on Maui a day ago. We decided to eat at a vietnamese vegetarian restaurant in town. The woman next to me saw me eat my noodles in under a minute or two and said "Boy you were hungry" I told her of our recent adventure and the trail we took, she had been to Haleakala before but said of our hike "That's the craziest trail! Usually people take the switchbacks to the top!" I will add more pictures of us high above the clouds and within the crater but for now this is just an idea of how high we were and how long our trail was.