We broke all records today as we left the
condo at 6:55 AM Kona time. It was going
to be a full day visiting the
As we approached the turn off for the green beach, Nonie suggested that since it was so early, we should make a quick detour back to the beach to pick up my sunglasses. I had been squinting into the sun as we drove and after short consideration and some rationale from Nonie, I opted to make the detour.
The hike was a totally different one from the previous day. We knew where we were going so that sped up the process. We tried to drive the Jeep in as far as we could but chickened out after only a few hundred metres. We speed walked into the beach in under 40 minutes. It took me a few tries to find the exact spot where I had laid my glasses. If I had not found them, they would probably still be there hundreds of years from now. Some tourist would find them and be in awe of this ancient Hawaiian technology. A power walk back to the Jeep and we were back to the main highway and on our way to the park with a delay of under 2 ½ hours. So much for the quick detour!
We arrived at the park and immediately went to the Visitor Centre to orient ourselves, catch a twenty minute introductory video, check on the access to a restricted hiking trail that will bring us within 3 miles of the active vent Pu’u O’o. The vent is part of the Kiluaea volcano and has been venting uninterrupted since 1983. You must register and sign a disclaimer to hike this trail. Nonie and I will hike the trail on a return trip to the park later in the week. Today is just an esploring day.
Due to our later arrival, the park was full of those pesky tourists and a number of buses.
One of the main reasons that I wanted to arrive early was to avoid some of the tourist congestion. We did discover that the bus tourist did not seem to want to get off or were not given time to get off the bus. They just did a quick drive up and stop at most of the attractions. Even a short walk to a view point seemed out of the question. This certainly reinforced our desire never, ever to be a bus tourist. I can see if your health precluded you from enjoying these short hikes but most of the bus tourists did not look so unhealthy as not to be able to walk a hundred metres or so.
There is an 11 mile drive around the
volcano called the
Our first stop was the steam vents. Rain water has filtered down into the ground where it heated enough to boil and generate steam. A short walk from this stop and we got our first look at the Kilauea Caldera. It is about 2 miles across at its widest.
Every once in a while we caught whiffs of sulfur from nearby steam vents. I sucked up a lot of sulfur at a natural gas plant during my Fort Nelson days so we did not feel the need to visit. It can also be very dangerous. H2S gas is a basic component of sulfur and it can kill you if enough is present. Signs warning of the dangers of the gas are every where.
We got back on the
Volcanoes are created by hot
spots in the earth’s shell where the magma has come close to the outer shell of
the earth and then found ways to vent through cracks in the outer surface. The
hot spot never moves but due to the natural continental drift (About 4” per
year) the location on the outer layer of the earth moves. That is how the
islands of
K’auai, the northern most island is the oldest island and the big
There is a new volcano vent called Lo ihi located in the ocean about 20 miles off the
south coast. In about 10,000 years it
will be a new island but right now it is still a mile under the sea but already
over 10,000 feet high. Nonie and I plan
to visit this new island when that occurs. This way we are sure to beat the
tourist buses. If you were to include
the mass that is located below the ocean surface,
Photo: Wikipedia
Next stop was the south rift zone. Due to the volcanic activity,
The cracks were so large that you can
actually walk down inside them. In fact, you could drive a sub-compact car into
it. Not as large as the
Halema’uma’u crater view point was our next stop. This is actually a smaller crater within the larger Kilauea Caldera. It is considered the birth place of the Goddess Pele. When we arrived, a large group of indigenous Hawaiians were just leaving. The men were wearing just a loin cloth and carrying wooden spears.
The women were wearing the most startling yellow dresses. They had just
completed a ceremony over the crater honoring their ancestors. Like Mauna Kea,
Devastation Trail was our next stop. We used the parking lot for a bit of lunch. The trail is a half mile out and back that takes you into the area of the 1974 eruption. The history of the park is captured by the years of the different eruptions.
As you near the crater the land goes from tropical rain forest to arid desert. The eruption completely denuded the area around this part of the crater and 30 years later nothing grows here yet. It can take hundreds of years for the flora to return.
In some lava flows, the outer layer of the lava cools and forms a hard shell around the molten lava. (2100 F) The molten lava inside the hard shell continues to flow. When the lava stops flowing, a hard shell is left behind creating a hollow tube that we can now visit.
Photo:stanford.edu
The Thurston Lava Tube is our next stop.
The tube entrance is located in a very dense tropical grotto. I expected Tarzan to pop out of the trees at any moment. As it was late in the day, there were no buses and we pretty well had the place to our selves. The tunnel was cool and had lots of water dripping from the ceiling. At the end of the tunnel was a gate where you were invited to continue to explore the tunnel in its more natural state. You needed flashlights. Nonie and I will stop here on our next visit and do a little esploring with our newly purchased headlamps that were bought specifically for this.
Our last stop of the day was the Kilauea Iki lookout. The Kilauea Iki crater is a smaller crater located adjacent to the larger Kilauea Caldera.
This is the trail head for our 4 mile walk along the rim of the Kilauea Iki caldera, down into the crater, across the caldera and back up the other side. This hike will go down as one of our top five hikes if not second best.
Our hike up Villarica volcano will probably be our #1 hike. There we actually climbed in to the caldera of a live volcano and had hot magma blowing over our heads.
The crater rim trail starts through a tropical rainforest climate with little peek-a-boo views of the crater. After a mile we headed down a steep and narrow trail (lots of steps) and as we reached the last few 100 feet, we were confronted by the floor of the crater.
The crater floor was very surreal. It was like we had walked out into a place where time had stopped. There were very few living things growing on the floor of the crater. Here and there, in cracks of broken lava, small bunches of grass and flowers grew.
In a few instances small trees called Apapane took hold in cracks no bigger than a saucer. The tree has small red feathery flower that seems to bloom all the time. The red of the flower is in stark contrast to the desolated look of the crater floor. Steam was rising from vents scattered over the floor of the crater creating a prehistoric atmosphere. What the earth would have looked like at the beginning of time. It certainly seemed the kind of place a hobbit would need to get rid of a certain ring.
There are two types of lava. ‘a’a (aaaahhhh) This type of lava is rough and jagged like the clinkers you get from coal fired boilers and is almost impossible to hike on. When it vented, it had less gas and a much lower temperature than the other type of lava and was created by more explosive activity.
Pahoehoe (Pahoehoe) is a soft billowy type of lava. It is flatter and is formed much hotter than the ‘a’a. It moves very slowly, kind of bubbling out of the vents. It moves slowly over the surface. This is the type of lava you see in pictures that people stand in front of and poke sticks into. Exactly the picture I would love to get. A partially solidified skin will form over the flow, sort of like the skin you get over the surface of boiled milk. This skin protects the lava from cooling to fast and allows it to travel great distances over the surface.
The floor of the crater was made mostly of Pahoehoe lava so it was very easy to walk on. In some areas, the Pahoehoe had bubbled up like a hot spot on a pizza, and then fractured into flat chunks that looking like huge paving stones. Trails had been built over the few areas of the rough ‘a’a lava to protect clutzy tourists. Falling on this stuff would hurt.
The hike took us just under two hours with the final section a climb up a narrow switch backed trail. Thankfully, there were no stairs. With trail weary legs we climbed back into the Jeep and the two hour return trip to Kailua Kona.
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