Pele's Playground - hiking in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park

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Thirty miles south-west of Hilo, at an altitude of 4000 feet (1200 metres), lies the small village of Volcano. Hidden from the highway and nestled within a beautiful rainforest, the village is one of the quietest, most peaceful settlements I have ever had the privilege of visiting. It also happens to lie on the doorstep of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, just a short walk from the park's centrepiece - Kilauea Caldera. Long thought to be merely a rift on the side of the much larger Mauna Loa, Kilauea (which appropriately means 'spewing' in Hawai'ian) has since been proven to be a distinct volcano - one of five on the Big Island of Hawai'i, along with Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, Hualalai and Kohala; though only Kilauea and Mauna Loa are still considered to be active. In fact Kilauea is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, having been erupting continuously for more than thirty years!

Current activity at Kilauea is concentrated in two areas, with ongoing eruptions occurring both at Halema'uma'u within the summit caldera and Pu'u O'o in the volcano's east rift zone. Halema'uma'u (House of Ferns) Crater is the legendary home of Madam Pele, the Hawai'ian goddess of volcanoes. It is a roughly circular pit crater approximately 800 metres in diameter that lies within the greater Kilauea Caldera. A small vent in the floor of Halema'uma'u opened up in March 2008, and since that time a lava lake - whose height is constantly fluctuating, but without yet overflowing - has been bubbling away restlessly. It is this activity that has forced the closure of the south-western half of both Crater Rim Drive and the Crater Rim hiking trail, as well as sometimes forcing closures elsewhere in the park due to potentially hazardous amounts of sulfur dioxide contained within the smoke plume that is constantly rising up out of the crater.

Pu'u O'o (Hill of the Digging Stick) is a cinder cone that has grown to a height of more than 800 feet (240 metres) above a vent in Kilauea's east rift zone - in a relatively inaccessible area just inside the National Park's boundaries, about ten miles east of the summit caldera - where lava has been flowing downhill to the sea (often through underground lava tubes) intermittently ever since the current eruption began on January 3rd, 1983; during which time it has buried eight miles of the Chain of Craters Road that previously ran parallel to the coastline. It is from this vent that the current lava flow originates, resulting in the steam plumes that can be seen rising up from the coastline where the lava enters the sea.

Arriving at the National Park visitors centre just before 11:30am, I had unwittingly timed my visit to coincide with the once-daily showing of a half-hour documentary on the 1959 eruption of Kilauea Iki (Little Kilauea) - a smaller crater adjacent to the summit caldera and separated from it only by a narrow ridge known as Byron Ledge. And while the quality of the picture may not have been great (at least by 21st century standards!), the footage of lava fountains up to 1900 feet (570 metres) high shooting up into the sky was nothing short of mind-blowing! Perhaps most incredible of all was that throughout the five-week eruption (that featured seventeen separate 'episodes'😉 people were allowed to watch the action from numerous vantage points around the rim of the crater, less than a mile from where the vent was erupting!

Not surprisingly, as soon as the film was over I headed to Kilauea Iki to see the results of the eruption for myself, following the four-mile loop trail that first skirts the rim of the crater before descending down into the abyss and crossing the crater floor from one end to the other. The first thing that struck me was how beautiful and thick the rainforest was, spilling over the rim of the crater and blanketing the steep slopes in vegetation. Only the lowest slopes inside the crater were barren, where a fifteen-metre-high 'bathtub ring' had been left after successive lava flows had drained back into the vent, often at a rate greater than that at which they had been expelled. In fact, although almost all of the lava that was expelled during the initial eruption episode had remained inside the crater in the form of a lava lake, almost ninety percent of the lava that poured into the lake in subsequent episodes ended up flowing back into the vent from which it came.

The numbers are truly staggering. In five weeks over 100,000,000 cubic metres of molten rock poured out of the vent, with just over a third of it remaining in the crater, creating a lake over 400 feet (135 metres) deep that half-filled the previously 800-foot-deep crater. When scientists drilled into this lava lake four months after the eruption ended, they made it only nine feet down before red hot molten lava started to ooze up to the surface. When they last drilled into the lake almost thirty years later, only traces of molten lava remained at depths of between 240 and 330 feet. And though the lake has been completely solid since the mid-1990's, it has still not yet finished cooling - as evidenced by the steam that issues forth from cracks in the lava's surface whenever rainwater seeps into the ground.

Having followed the trail along the rim of the crater, I then continued down to the crater floor, which was as barren as you would expect a fifty-year-old lava flow to be - with the exception of the occassional young 'ohi'a tree surviving against the odds - and eerily quiet, with a light mist adding to the sombre atmosphere. Not far along I came to the base of Pu'u Pua'i (Gushing Hill), the cinder-and-spatter cone that grew to a height of over 400 feet in just five weeks immediately above the vent, formed by fragments of frothy lava (cinder) and blobs of molten rock (spatter) accumulating on top of each other. And though the actual vent through which all of that lava was expelled has long since been covered by rockslides that have slid down the face of Pu'u Pua'i, there is no mistaking the location of the vent, for there is still a gaping wound at the base of the crater wall.

Standing in front of this hellmouth, having just seen footage of massive lava fountains erupting from it, was one of the eeriest feelings I have ever had in my life. For some reason my eyes had trouble focusing on what they were seeing - it was difficult somehow to adjust to the scale of this great hole in the earth; the likes of which I had never seen before. And though I wasn't far from the main trail, I had the place all to myself - apart from a lone 'apapane bird serenading me from the branches of a nearby 'ohi'a tree - which only added to the surreal nature of the moment. I'm not sure I could ever do the moment justice with words, and the pictures might not look like much, but it was certainly an experience I will never forget.

From the crater floor I made my way back up to the rim, where a short detour led to the Thurston Lava Tube. This was formed long ago when a river of lava flowed through the area, it's outer layer cooling in the atmosphere and solidifying; creating a tube through which the molten lava within continued to flow, eventually leaving a near-perfectly cylindrical cave surrounded by forest. From there I returned to the Kilauea Iki overlook where I had begun my hike for one last look at the crater, before taking a shortcut back to the village along a well-maintained but rarely-used grass road that cuts through the forest and doubles as a hiking trail.

The next day I followed the Crater Rim trail around the southern side of the summit caldera as far as Keanakako'i (Cave of the Adzes) Crater, then passed an overlook on the opposite side of Kilauea Iki to the one that I had visited the day before; before taking the aptly-named Devastation trail around the back of Pu'u Pua'i and then linking up with the Byron Ledge trail that followed the ridge separating Kilauea Iki from the main Kilauea Caldera. After a quick lunch stop at Volcano House, I then continued around the northern side of the caldera to check out the Sulphur Banks, where hazardous volcanic gases seep out of the ground, bleaching the ground and killing the surrounding vegetation; and the Steaming Bluffs, where plumes of steam rise up from a line of fractures in the ground along the edge of the caldera.

My plan for monday was simple: head south-east and keep walking until I hit the Chain of Craters Road! This was immediately compromised however when I took a slight detour to have another look at Kilauea Iki, and seeing that the weather had cleared for the first time since my arrival in Volcano I decided to repeat the Kilauea Iki loop hike that I had done two days earlier. Eventually though I returned to the Escape Road that cut a relatively straight line through the forest, before emerging out into the open at an old lava flow. It wasn't long before I had arrived at the end of the old Chain of Craters Road - or at least the end of the 'driveable' road; for as with the newer road that continues down to the coast, lava flows have long since buried the last six miles of pavement.

Just as Kilauea Iki had stolen the headlines in November 1959, ten yeas later it was an eruption in the forest to the south-east of the summit caldera - in the vicinity of the Old Chain of Craters Road - that had burst into the limelight. On the morning of May 24, 1969, a giant crack in the earth opened up that would soon grow to a mile in length, with lava fountains hundreds of feet high blasting skyward along the entire length of the fissure. By midnight most of the fountaining had ended, with the only ongoing activity being concentrated at the main vent. But where Kilauea Iki continued to erupt for the next five weeks, this vent would remain active for the next five YEARS! In 1969 alone, no less than twelve towering fountains of molten rock (some up to 1700 feet high) would erupt from the vent, creating a lava shield named Mauna Ulu (Growing Mountain) that would eventually reach a height of 400 feet (120 metres).

After first examining the line of fissures where the earth's crust was torn apart at the beginning of the eruption - and where every type of plant life imaginable now fights for space in the giant cracks - I then followed a hiking trail that roughly follows the route of the original Chain of Craters Road; though not only has the road been completely buried, so too have the craters that it once passed, many of which were completely filled in by the advancing lava from the vent beneath Mauna Ulu. As with the crater floor at Kilauea Iki, the occasional 'ohi'a tree had managed to gain a foothold in the forty-year-old lava; while in some places a kipuka (an island of vegetation left unharmed but surrounded by advancing lava flows) would provide an oasis of greenery in an otherwise barren sea of dark grey.

From the top of Pu'u Huluhulu (Shaggy Hill) there was an excellent view of both Mauna Ulu and a perched lava pond on it's lower flanks. From there I continued along the hiking trail, which by now consisted of little more than the occasional a'hu (rock cairn) piled high every fifty metres or so to lead the way across the otherwise featureless lava flow. It was quite a strange feeling to set out across this bleak landscape, with clouds of fog limiting visibility to only a few hundred metres at times, and with only one other person passing me in the space of two or three hours. Eventually though I came to a substantial kipuka beside Makaopuhi (Eye of the Eel) Crater, where I then turned Makai (seaward) and followed another trail down towards the coast.

It was toward the end of this trail that I caught up to a couple of fellow hikers inspecting a collapsed lava tube, with whom I then continued all the way out to the Kealakomo Overlook on the new Chain of Craters Road. It was along this last stretch of trail that we were startled to discover that the seemingly endless swathe of blue in front of us was in fact the sea and not the sky - so deceptive was the nature of the terrain we were walking across, which despite clearly sloping toward the sea must have been significantly steeper than we had believed, that the horizon genuinely appeared to be above us!

This phenomenon continued as we reached the Kealakomo Overlook, where a viewing platform sits perched atop the Holei Pali (cliffs) which fall hundreds of feet down to the broad and relatively flat coastal plain below. The view from Kealakomo is quite extraordinary, as you can see the horizon extending around for a full 180 degrees, though I still had trouble convincing myself that the horizon was in fact in the correct location (though where else would it be?), especially after following it right around to the left (east) past where the road dropped out of sight behind the cliffs. It was quite a fascinating and unexpected optical illusion!

Having by now hiked about sixteen miles for the day - leaving me about ten miles down the road from Volcano village - I had just one order of business left before I could call it a day: finding a ride home! But since this was Hawai'i after all, where I'd had no trouble whatsoever hitching a ride to Waipi'o Valley and back the previous week (nor getting a ride back to Hilo from the thermal pool at Ahalanui later that same week - after the bus I had intended to catch had flown by so fast that I was unable to flag it down, despite having been waiting only about twenty metres from the road!), I had little doubt that I wouldn't have to walk too far before getting a ride. And as it turned out I was right to feel confident - for in the end I didn't have to walk anywhere!

Although the two guys I had finished the hike with couldn't help me out because they were headed in the opposite direction to the end of Chain of Craters Road; and their friend who had locked his keys in his car and therefore had to wait behind for the mobile locksmith to come was also headed in that direction; it made perfect sense that the locksmith himself would end up offering me a ride back up to the village after he had completed the formality of popping open the car door! As I had previously been told on more than one occasion, the spirit of 'aloha' is indeed alive and well on the islands!

Back at the hostel in Volcano that night - which was really a large house that had been opened up to backpackers, and was owned by a lovely Japanese couple - I met a girl from Brazil (Fernanda) and a guy from Switzerland (Yann). And though Fernanda was leaving the next morning, Yann was inclined to spend another night in Volcano as he was hoping to hike to the current lava flow from the end of Chain of Craters Road the next day - something I had also been wanting to do. However, unlike me, Yann had something that would prove vital for such an undertaking: a rental car!

And so it was that the following morning we were up at the crack of dawn (though I didn't actually hear the crack - perhaps I was in the shower when it happened) and on our way down the incredibly scenic road, which first winds it's way through the forest over a kilometre above sea level, then emerges out into the clear where it crosses numerous old lava flows - providing some breathtaking views of the coastline far below - before dropping steeply down the face of the Holei Pali cliffs and finally continuing parallel to the shore for the last few miles before coming to a sudden stop at a gated checkpoint. And best of all, the entire panorama of sea, sky and lava that unfolded before us was bathed in sunshine, as we had finally been blessed with a cloudless blue sky... though this blessing would later turn out to be a curse!

Feeling energized by the dramatic scenery that had greeted us, we practically bounded out of the car (there had been only one other car there when we arrived) to inspect the nearby Holei Sea Arch, before smearing ourselves in sunscreen and setting off across the seemingly endless sea of lava that stretched out before us. With no real trail to speak of - and with the next eight miles of road having been completely buried underneath successive lava flows over the past thirty years - we had nothing to follow but the sight of two steam plumes rising up out of the sea far ahead in the distance. But really, as I told Yann: 'as long as the green (forested cliffs) is on our left; the blue (ocean) is on our right; the black (lava) is underneath us and the white (plumes of steam) is in front of us, we must be going in the right direction!' There was definitely not going to be any need for a GPS on this hike.

Onward and onward we walked, surrounded on all sides (except for the seaside, obviously) by a boundless expanse of pahoehoe lava (there being two types of lava in Hawai'i - pahoehoe which is smooth and consistent; and a'a which is rough and broken up). Initially the twin smoke stacks on the horizon didn't seem to be getting any closer at all, and with the sun beating down on us relentlessly it had turned into quite a hard slog; and one that was becoming increasingly monotonous, with very little in the way of visual stimulation other than the constant rising and falling of the lava, which really was reminiscent of a great inland sea with it's undulating surface full of peaks and troughs. Finally, after perhaps an hour or so, we were able to make out the route that the lava was taking as it flowed down the steep coastal cliffs - not that we could actually see the lava itself, but there was no mistaking the line of smoke zig-zagging down the hillside where the advancing lava flow was obviously burning anything that it came into contact with.

Not long after that we began to notice that not only were the plumes of steam getting bigger, but we could first hear and then see the numerous helicopters hovering above them, taking the more wealthy tourists directly to the lava flow and eliminating the need for a six-mile hike! And eventually, about two-and-a-half hours after we had started out, we came to a low ridge in the lava from where we could see not only the nearest plume of steam billowing up out of the sea just up ahead - with a beautiful, and presumably very new, black sand beach immediately in front of it - but also the unmistakeable warping of the air that could only be caused by a scorching hot surface directly in front of us, indicating that we should proceed with caution if we wanted to avoid turning our shoes into liquid!

Armed with only our common sense (kindly provided by Yann) and a big stick (held by yours truly), we slowly advanced toward a section of lava that was much shinier and lighter in colour (bright silver as opposed to dark grey) than the surrounding lava. After prodding this suspicious looking ground a couple of times to make sure that a) the ground was in fact solid and not liquid, and b) that the stick didn't burn on contact with it, we took a few tentative steps onto this shiny silver mass... I couldn't help but notice at this point that Yann dropped a few paces behind me... to find that although this lava had indeed cooled, it had clearly not yet COMPLETELY cooled, as we could not only feel the heat through our shoes but on our arms and legs as well! Needless to say we didn't exactly linger on the silver stuff, especially when we suddenly noticed a third plume of steam rising up out of the water immediately beside us, only about ten or twenty metres away!

It was at this point that we realized the 'live' lava that was entering the sea must have been flowing through subterranean lava tubes... and that one of those rivers of lava must have been flowing directly UNDERNEATH us! So strictly speaking we didn't actually get to see the molten lava (just a whole shitload of solid lava!), but it was nevertheless a pretty amazing spectacle to experience! There was just one problem: we now had to hike BACK over the same six miles of lava that we had just crossed! And by now the sun was directly overhead, leaving us positively baking - especially Yann, who was clearly more accustomed to hiking through snow-capped mountains in the Alps than across barren lava flows in the Tropics; and who by now must have been seriously questioning the wisdom of hiking for hour after hour across terrain that not only offered no shade whatsoever, but was in fact too hot to even sit down on for a rest without getting third degree burns on your arse!

Thankfully we did eventually make it back to the end of the road - more than five hours after we had left it - and were able to crank up the air-conditioning in Yann's rental 4WD as we made our way slowly back up the Chain of Craters Road toward Volcano village. As with so many hikes that I had attempted in Hawai'i over the past three weeks - and a particularly memorable hike that I had done in Turkey just under a year ago - it was a day I would not soon forget... and I was pretty sure the same could be said for Yann!

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Photos

Belly of the Beast
Kilauea Iki crater

Peering into the Abyss
View from the Kilauea Iki trail

Gushing Hill
Pu'u Pua'i

Barren Landscape
A lone ohi'a tree on the floor of Kilauea Iki

Welcome to the Hellmouth
The main vent at the base of Pu'u Pua'i

Up close and personal
A defiant ohi'a tree standing watch over the vent

Devastation Trail
What's left of the forest behind Pu'u Pua'i

Steaming Bluffs
A line of steam vents on the rim of Kilauea Caldera

Fault Line
Part of the mile-long fissure from the 1969 eruption

Growing Mountain
View of Mauna Ulu (and yours truly) from Pu'u Huluhulu

Skylight
Collapsed lava tube on the Napau Crater trail

Sight for sore eyes
Approaching Kealakomo Overlook on Chain of Craters Road

Long Mountain
Distant view of Mauna Loa rising up behind Chain of Craters Road

End of the Road
Madam Pele had done a little roadwork of her own

A coastline that's younger than me
Lava cliffs formed in the last thirty years

The end is just the beginning
End of the trail, but only the start of the hike

Black and Blue
Sea of lava meets sea of water

Endless expanse of lava
Thirty years worth of lava flows

Black Sand Beach
A beach that may well only be months old

First signs of life
Yann celebrating the fact that we had finally made it back to 'the road'

Tropical Oasis
At first we weren't sure if it was actually just a mirage!