Kilauea Volcano Exploration

I sat on a ledge less than 50m from the action. Orange blobs of lava shot starward as ocean waves crashed into the hot lava, flowing out of sight but reflected in the tremendous steam/gas clouds rising and roiling above this violent meeting of molten earth and super-heated sea. Stunning. The photos show orange streaks, but what I saw was the actual blobs flying, some of which trailed mini-plumes of gases like meteors with streaming tails.

The sounds were vividly alive: waves crashing, lava hissing, and blobs taping lightly as they landed in front of me and faded into blackness.

I headed to Mt. Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii in search of hot lava, wanting to experience it up close and personal. I’d been "turned on" to live volcanoes a couple years ago on Mt Erebus in Antarctica.

I rented a hatchback and lived in it at free campgrounds, cooking farmers’ market fare on my campstove. I enjoyed a relatively cheap trip with maximum flexibility and spontaneity; totally my style.

The exact locations where lava flows on the surface change almost daily, and officials imply that more places are legally closed than actually are. I understand the importance of this for the non-outdoorsy public; however, it required a lot more work on my part.

It was a sleuthing project involving talking to as many people as possible, assessing their reliability, comparing maps (some of which aren’t current due to lava destroying and creating), learning to interpret the USGS daily volcano report, figuring out which laws were enforced and how, which sites and access points are high profile, and trying to read between the lines coming from the mouths of well-trained Park Service rangers.

The action this year is outside of Volcanoes National Park. The lava flows in hidden tubes on its way to the ocean entry points where the official viewpoint is located. It flows down a hill through a defunct housing development; only an island of forest and a couple ruins remain. To safely manage the public, the state Civil Defense provides a well-guarded official veiw-point quite a distance from the ocean entry points, open limited hours.

Being comfortable walking on loose uneven surfaces has it’s advantages, allowing one to easily use more distant access points: less obvious to law enforcement.

Choosing a legal parking spot within the park, I hiked in black clothing (camo) across an older lava flow for 2.5 hours out of the Park to get to the large tree-island in the defunct subdivision. I skirted the lower edge of the trees, admiring the many “tree molds”: holes in the lava from where it had surrounded trees before burning them up. A fleet of helicopters on flight-seeing tours, research tasks, and occasionally law enforcement demanded attention. I was trespassing and probably also breaking some other broad-brush law designed to bust terrorists like me within a quarter mile of the flow.

The increasing smells of gases, tree soot, and the cooling lava itself informed me that I was approaching the current smoldering flow. When the lava had recently flowed on the surface, the wind blew the gases and heat into the adjacent forest, scorching it and providing me fairly easy, if hot and sooty, uphill travel. More importantly, the trees provided cover for the increased number helicopters flying close above as I was adjacent to the steamy flow. I hid behind trees, dashed from cover to cover, and did my best to avoid being seen. Most pilots are renegades not likely to bust me, but I sure wasn’t willing to take any chances.

I wanted to cross the flow to confirm that there wasn’t any surface exposure along the other side. Fortunately there were pauses in the helicopter flights, so I went for it, hustling across fresh lava, some of which was nasty loose a’a lava, for my first time. It was an exciting dash through the gases along a rough and circuitous route. At certain spots the intense smell and heat suddenly increased, instantly turning me in another direction, my pulse rising as I increased my exposure time. I made it across with the same cotton-mouth feeling I get when leading hard routes!

The rainforest-thick vegetation and that awful, loose, sharp a’a lava made for a heinous descent along the far edge (ok, sandals didn’t help, but at least the socks did). My dash back across at the base of the hill, hours later, was much more relaxed because the hot lava seemed to run deeper under the surface and I had a better feel for the risk.

In hopes of finding a lava “break-out” near where it emerged from the deep, I prepared for long hikes from a basecamp into a closed area. I planned three nights to give myself enough time to try different routes in my quest. The campsite lacked water, so ahead of time I hiked in to cache four gallons, get a feel for the terrain, where exactly the trail closure began, and the amount of law enforcement coverage. Because I would have to have a camping permit, they would know I was there; what else would I be doing there for that much time?

Later I backpacked in for the blitz. Knowing I needed a lot of darkness, I went to “sleep” at 5:30pm for my 9:30pm alpine start. The moon was so bright I didn’t use my headlamp for a long time; much easier to see distant terrain silhouettes.

When I arrived at the edge of the old flows at the base of Pu‘u O‘o (a small peak along the rift ridge and source of current flow; in the photos), I was lured by the promising orange glow in the gas clouds arising from top of the ridge, appearing to reflect the hot red stuff just below. I headed straight up there, only to find that my speed dropped dramatically as I discovered what the locals call “shelly” lava, “breakable crust” in ski lingo. I felt like I was moving fairly quickly but realized that although my body was in constant motion, I really wasn’t making much actual progress. Evaluating the surface failure potential of each step, recovering balance from collapses, and dodging the weakest surfaces made for a highly circuitous, inefficient route.

As I ascended, the orange glow shifted location and I realized it had never been coming from Pu‘u O‘o, but from the break-out a good distance on the other side. I started to traverse to the far side where I knew the lava began its descent to the sea. This meant going into the gas plume, which had disadvantages… eyes stinging, a coughy feeling in my throat… potentially much worse. Depending on how intensely the wind blew, I alternated between the traverse toward the compelling orange glow, and bailing for the trees, irritatingly out of sight a mile+, where I might(??) be able to travel faster and in better air, but it would be an even longer approach (miles).

Now the rock had changed, becoming talus that frequently disintegrated, from decades of the acidic plume, when stepped upon. Slow! But finally I could see the bright orange of a lava break-out… in the far distance. At one point the glare intensified as the lava appeared to be shooting up out of the fissure. Beautiful even at a distance. Argh! How I wanted to be there!

It was getting rather obvious that I wouldn’t have time to get there and back by daylight, esp since after daybreak, I would have to take an off-trail, much slower route back the last few miles so I couldn’t be seen on the closed trail.

Eventually I made it to the trees where I found forest too dense to travel in for daytime cover (damn). I began the long traverse back on the old but solid lava, following the highly irregular lava-forest edge (circuitous, yet again), back around to where it intersected the trail I left to approach the mountain. Clouds obscured the moon, rain didn’t help, and in the faint beam of my light, I saw a hazard I hadn’t yet encountered: volcanic ash partly covering deep “earth cracks” in the underlying lava-rock, like snow covering crevasses. Hmm.

An hour after daylight I made it back to camp. Later I hiked out, having accepted that it is just too far to access the break-outs from this side. Damn! But it had been a good effort; appreciated getting a real feel for the different kinds of lava terrain here.

From a scientist on Mt Erebus, I had a name of a local volcanologist who invited me to go into the field with him and a class. I learned a lot about assessing active volcanic risks and without the fear of getting busted, thanks to Ken’s permit. It turned out that I was far more cautious than I needed to be that earlier day (no surprise).

Around 4am, Ken led us out to admire the lava “ocean entries” in their illuminescent glory. We sat admiring the flying-lava-bomb show through sunrise, at which point I could see large chunks of fresh lava floating in the water, orange in the middle and steaming heavily before cooling and disappearing. Floating steaming lava! How crazy is that?!

Soon it was time to head to a small skylight (hole in lava tube ceiling) radiating such intense heat/gases that we approached from upwind. Ken took samples of the dangling lava-cicles with a steel cup mounted on a long metal rod.

Through the skylight, you could see the flowing incandescence down in the lava tube. We threw in rocks to see the lava surface and flow rate, which otherwise aren’t discernible because of the brightness. It was amazing to watch the rocks gently received in the viscous flow, maybe flowing 4-5mph? A head-sized rock would smoothly submerge or nearly, while smaller ones rafted along peacefully in the 1800F degree flow out of sight.

On another early morning I returned to this same ocean entry. The site looked different, further out into the ocean. New lava had created new land, some of which might later break off and fall into the sea on its loose base.

I moved in pretty close, enough so that when a big wave sent a lot of incandescent blobs overhead, I reflexively went into the mode learned on the Antarctic volcano Mt. Erebus to avoid getting hit. A couple tiny blobs landed nearby… a bit too close for comfort. Very interesting location: alive and dynamic, commanding of great respect.

Then I saw it, slow moving orange nearby, intensely bright at the tip… an actual break-out, what I’d been hoping to encounter. And better yet, it was below a meter-high ledge that provided protection from the fiery heat as the lava creaked and popped and slowly oozed and crept my way. Absolutely mesmerizing. And the smell of the lava itself was even more intense than usual: a sharp metallic smell, one that stayed on my skin for a short while afterward. Fascinating to see how the fantastic shapes of cooled lava form, and how irregularly it flows, sometimes stopping in one place only to break through somewhere else where it had been slowly cooling. Clearly a lot of pressure behind the flow.

The sound alone was captivating. It truly creaked and snapped and popped and groaned; strands of glass stretching and breaking on the surface of the slow-mo flow. So alive, earth and rock being born right in front of me, uncontrollable on the big scale; the very tip of a direct conduit through the crust deep down into the mantle of the earth. ‘Twas a magical, encompassing, wildly multi-sensory experience, one I am most definitely not ‘over’.

In daylight the surface of much of this pahoehoe flow might have appeared dark, but it was in it’s vivid orange glory at this hour. It was so intensely hot that I tied a bandana around my face and worried a bit about my camera.

Many of you know that my sole goal in going to Kilauea was to stick a stick into hot lava. Finally I found the real thing, but WHERE WAS MY STICK?! How easily I could have brought one to that site, argh! Life is about improvisation, right? As the luscious lava creaked and glided just below my ledge, I quickly reached over with a rock to bang on the hot orange tip of the flow. Amazingly I had to whack it pretty hard to dent the surface. Fun!

That half hour was distinctly the highlight, but definitely not representative of my overall experience.

I met a really cool biologist who works on alien species in the Park. He had done his thesis near where I live with a scientist I know from Antarctica. Later we went for a hike and I heard about the issues, complications biological and political… as well as general local info and lore. The summary is that Hawaii has been as destroyed as anywhere on this planet because of invasive species wreaking havoc; quite a story, and much energy goes into minimizing further damage. I helped him walk his dogs in the rain and had dinner with him a couple times. It was nice to have a friend there, someone to answer questions and process my experience with.

The current volcanological excitement in Hawai’i is the recently-started gaseous eruption of a vent in the main crater on Mt. Kilauea called Halema’uma’u (got that?). It’s spewing tons of ash and toxic gases that caused the Park to close when the winds changed. Thousands of people, mostly in tour buses, had to leave. I was on a hike that day in a remote part of the Park so didn’t find out until I saw the note on my car. I was far from the gas plume, in great air at the far end of the road. I put the note back in its bag and under the windshield wiper where I’d found it, and made dinner at the back of the car. Ended up sleeping in the car right there, having concocted a reasonable story in the highly unlikely event I was found.

The next day I left the Park and went down to the eastern coast, to delightful steam caves mentioned in the guidebook I borrowed from the local library. There I met a local who directed me to a coastal state park where I could safely camp for free.

On a walk the next morning I discovered that wild coconuts do not look like the fibrous brown ones you see in a store, and that they are very difficult to open by hand. Soon I met a Hawaiian who answered my questions about how to tell if a coconut was ripe and how open one. Imua was super kind and friendly in an innocent way; a treat to hang out with. After awhile I followed him to his house where we used his giant hook to pull down coconuts. He showed me how to chop them open with a machete: MUCH easier than the rock-bang and wrestle-peel method. We spent some time opening them, drinking the “milk” inside, and getting into the ‘meat’, which was soft and slippery, a lot different than I’d seen; tastier too. It was really fun to see how coconuts develop, to get a sense of them. They were brought by the early Polynesians, but are not an overtaking, destructive introduced species.

Later I went to another coastal park and found lava tubes long enough to require two headlamps. If one died, you’d have a very difficult time trying to get back out.

Lava tubes are everywhere and super interesting; I quickly learned to always carry leather gloves and at least one headlamp in my pack. [As a precaution I made a habit of leaving my pack clearly visible from the air (when possible) just outside the cave I was exploring.] Some caves sport a variety of features created by the river of lava that once flowed within and the tremendous convective gas currents rushing across the lava and out through skylights. Over the centuries after the lava flow ceases, various microbes colonize the tubes. In some tubes you can stand and walk quite easily for a hundreds meters or more, sometimes dodging roots, maybe seeing one of the blind cricket species that evolved there, or slime molds, bacterial coatings, and minerals deposits. It’s important not to touch the features.

I was pretty motivated to check out all the variations and channels I could reasonably fit into in all the lavas tubes I found throughout my explorations. Always the question: to squeeze through and hope it will widen into another wide area? To take the risk of having to shimmy and crawl backwards, clothing snagging on everything, because the tube stayed small? Even a casual practice of yoga has many benefits.

It took me awhile to understand how the Park Service manages visitors and lava tubes. They consistently but very subtly discourage tube exploration, subtly in order to avoid drawing attention to the caves. This is for very good reason because of the fragility of the features alone (never mind the safety issues). The Park has developed a huge, nearly featureless tube through which thousands of people walk every year. In the smaller caves or narrower channels in the backcountry, I didn’t see evidence of exploration. At times I even had to temporarily move rocks to worm my way through.

One cave ended at the cliffs above the ocean, tall basalt cliffs upon which the waves slam so hard they make the rock you’re sitting on at the edge actually vibrate. The first time I felt that I almost dropped my camera while leaping away.

Anyway, big waves sent water pouring through unseen cracks in the roof of the cave I was in, but it flowed out through other cracks.

Then around the corner in a tight chamber I came upon… old human bones. Startling.

It was a burial site, of which I later learned there are many. The very incomplete skeleton was accompanied by a bit of wood ash and glass beads near the head area. The bones looked quite friable.

Much to wonder about. Who? Circumstances? When?

Deep in that tight dark cave, alone, I definitely considered the implications of disturbing (by simply being there) such a site. Hawaiian religion is alive and well; what did the volcano goddess Pele think? I didn’t touch anything nor take any pictures.

Later that day, after yet another really interesting cave and time to think about the burial site, I returned to take a more clear inventory of what I saw, wanting to remember it well.

Eventually I caught wind of the Kazumura Cave, the longest lava tube on Earth, some 40 miles, steep overall, 5 centuries old, and heavily researched as far as lava tubes go.

I paid $20 cash for a private four-hour tour through a mile long section of this cave. The guide was a guy my age living with his parents in a rural rainforest housing development over this lava tube.

Harry and his parents are absolute characters, the ultimate Mom & Pop scene. They bought the land and as they hand-cleared a place for a house, they stumbled upon an opening to this amazing cave. They educated themselves and developed it minimally with a heavy emphasis on preservation of the delicate features, some of which are very rare. Lava-falls limit how far one can easily travel up or down the cave, and they have a locked gate at their entrance, a response to vandalism.

Their tour business isn’t strictly “legal” because the cave doesn’t officially exist, or does it?… Ambiguity surrounds ownership and liability: agencies making silly and contradictory laws over who has rights, or simply ignoring caves altogether to avoid liability. But it clearly exists in the scientific world; it even has bits of marked survey tape along the walls as reference points.

The business has no real website, no email, no real marketing. The family is very protective of the cave and won’t allow groups of young kids in. These folks aren’t exactly the most, uh, “diplomatic” or “professional” in talking to would-be cave explorers who have certain expectations. Their stories are rather entertaining.

Hawaii seems to draw a lot of “independent, alternative” types, much like Alaskans but less hardy. Harry and his mom Ellouise were so unusual, opinionated, friendly, and chatty that I stayed another hour.5 just to listen.

I highly recommend the tour. Despite being very critical of academia, Harry has learned an impressive amount of geology, mineralogy, chemistry, and fluid dynamics. He has spent untold days studying the cave and consulting with endless numbers of experts who have helped him figure out how the formations were created and identifying the different biological features. I didn’t catch everything he said, but I learned a lot and had a ton of fun anyway.

A couple mongooses and even a wild pig (both extremely destructive aliens) long ago found their way into the cave… but not back out. We saw their remains, and even the outline of the pig’s body on the floor where he lied down for the last time. Wild!

Throughout the trip I’d been scoping out the details for a stealth approach of the Halema‘uma‘u crater, that new eruptive site that caused the park closure. A webcam and other instruments from the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, overlooking the crater, keep careful watch of the eruption. Someone is on duty all night, discretion is advised. I developed a plan: a parking place and approach other than the obvious sneak-access favored by most scofflaws (locals).

Fortunately, my skills for running around in the dark, with minimal headlamp use, figuring out off-trail routes were improving. Route-finding is a lot harder when one needs to avoid the use of a light and there aren’t many large-scale land forms to navigate from.

Hidden in black clothing, I found the balance between being upwind, out of plume, and somewhat out of sight of the observatory, as I positioned myself at the crater rim overlooking the fiery pit 400 feet below. Once again, the sounds were fantastic: a loud, deep, irregular whomphy breathing as the crater coughed out clouds of ash and nasty acidic gases like sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. Occasionally I could peer down into the upwind end of the pit just enough to admire the interior wall illuminated by the molten magma lake hidden by its own incandescence and glowing plume.

It’s powerful to experience landscapes in a multi-sensory, all-encompassing, intimate way. So real, so engaging; full presence… our planet in all it’s glory.

Then for a moment, the wind shifted and gave me a lungful of visceral comprehension of how all those people died in 1790 when a plume engulfed them. As I quickly headed upwind from the toxic gases, I was abruptly stopped by burning eyes accompanied by the far scarier sensation of burning lungs. It was merely one second’s worth, one breath, before the wind pushed the plume back. Because of its brevity I was grateful for the experience; a sharp reality check on volcanic hazards.

I do believe that now and then, one has to put a metaphorical toe, just a toe, over the edge of any given hazard to feel out where that edge actually is, to understand the risk on a gut level, not simply intellectually. This is known as getting experience, real experience, the kind one doesn’t get under the protective wing of the Park Service. Or a guide.

All and all it was an amazing 3 weeks. I learned a ton and had a blast.

Photos at pbase.com/antarctic_suze