lava – The PolyBlog

Honeymoon recap 04 – Helicopter tour and lava at night

January 27 2015

Andrea and I had seen the big volcano and the lava fields, and the volcano itself was an item on my bucket list that had now been checked off. It was a good month for bucket list items — I’d gotten married for love, we were in Hawaii, we had seen a volcano; it was all good. But day 4 was a chance to check off the volcano again, combined with another bucket list item — go for a ride in a helicopter!

Blue Hawaiian had the best configuration for us, and had flights out of the Hilo airport rather than the big one back by Kona. We got set up the day before, I think, and went out to the airport for a mid-afternoon flight. I was pretty excited, and a bit nervous. Lots of stories flooded the guidebooks about people going on the flights and not being able to sit together, or the flight not going at all supposedly because of weight distribution (i.e., in reality, they didn’t have enough paying passengers to cover the fuel cost). But there were two couples, ourselves and a younger Asian couple. I think they were honeymooners, too, but I can’t remember if they were married on the same date as us or not. They sat in the front, Andrea and me in the back, on opposite sides, but we could still hold hands. Excitement eroded the nervousness, and we took off.

The first photo to come up? Our helicopter awaits!

Rising up, we could see the ocean to the east of the airport.

The big town of Hilo, which is where we stayed on the east side of the island.

In the next shot, you can see some very squared fields, with barriers around for soil and wind erosion. These were macadamia nut farms, one of the big exports from the island.

The first stop on the tour was above the main active volcano, of course. Mind you, you can’t get that close to it given the thermal updrafts and the sulfuric gas, but it was cool to see.

Running all the way from the crater to the sea is a line of vents where steam has worked its way to the surface. The steam vents follow the magma that flows under the surface.

Another, closer shot of the volcano.

And turning around, a shot from the crater all the way to the sea where the magma is hitting the ocean.

A lava “delta”, which is not the technical term I’m sure, but it does look like a delta bed from a river, except it was a river of molten rock rather than water.

The lava bed that runs just above the entry point into the sea.

It’s hard to see, but you can see a small white square at the seven o’clock position. Can you guess what it is? Don’t worry, we have better shots of it.

It’s a house. That somehow, some way, survived a lava flow. It’s relatively intact.

Moving on to the magma…It’s impossible to see at this resolution, but at the 1:30 position, you can see a hint of the magma hitting the open air, and dropping into the sea.

Fortunately, in this shot, no magnification or searching is needed — bucket list item confirmed x 2 — helicopter ride AND active volcano! Check!

A little farther out to sea, you could see the size of the immediate lava field. The old one is way far to the right and the one we were hiking on the day before is a couple of miles to the left. Later, we’ll see shots of the plumes of steam below at night, from a position about half a mile or so to the right.

More lava, as seen from above.

Okay, this next image needs a small explanation. Look at the 9:00 o’clock position, just to the left of centre. Do you see a nice orange spot? That’s a vent. You can see it better in the second image below. These are holes in the crust, often where it gave way or a bit of magma kept splashing up and making a hole. In the second image, you can see the orange glow of the active magma flowing below. It is hot, it is identifiable, and you know what else? It’s a magnet for morons. I swear to god there are people who hike across that old crust to try and peer down into the vents. Maybe not directly down, but pretty close. If it collapses? You go for a magma swim. No one knows how thick the crust is, or what’s going on underneath that little cavern. The experts send little robots or dangle cameras on poles from 50 feet away while wearing full asbestos gear (which might protect them for a second if they are just scrambling on cracked rocks, not directly in magma). But some of the tourists go right up and look down. Future Darwin award winners, no doubt.

The helicopter tour then left the volcano area and took us on a tour around Hilo. These are the Rainbow falls, I think. Might have been the Akaka falls, but seems too close to Hilo to me.

This is a shot of the Hilo harbour, with our crescent-shaped hotel a little off-centre to the 4:00 position.

Or a full shot of it on the left.

After the helicopter tour, we headed off to the lava field for a night display. We didn’t know quite what to expect, and to be honest, we thought of not going. We had heard about it, but we’d seen it from the fields already (little to see from a distance) and we’d seen it pretty well from the helicopter. But the helicopter pilot recommended it and said it was worth a go. The cost was minimal, and we had nothing else booked for the night, so off we went. It was a bit hard to find, and we were potentially lost more than once, but we eventually ended up where we needed to be. Not a lot of signage, but we got there. When we went to park, it felt like I was at a country fair or exhibition back home. People parking in fields, some young people out directing parkers where to go. But note that we were parking partly on old lava field. It was a rental, but I was still a bit nervous about punctured tires.

Once you get out of your car, you have about 3/4 of a mile to walk to the viewing area. No problem, right? Welllll, that’s not exactly the whole story. First, yes, there is a path. Over rocks, lava, trees, between brush, over brush, over a creek, etc. In daylight, this isn’t a big deal. Coming back in the dark? Not so fun. Second, if you fall, you’re skinning yourself on lava rock. My shin took a beating. But the trip was worth it. Check out the sky and the colour of the steam plumes from the lava below. But as much as I was worried about the hiking, bear in mind that Andrea and I planned ahead and we had actual MEC hiker boots/shoes. There were other people “hiking” on this trail in flip-flops. FLIP-FLOPS! On lava that shreds rubber! Eek!

That was worth the price of admission, just for the colours of the sunset.

Now, here’s the attraction, and what you don’t see during the day. The magma is not gently pouring into the sea. It’s a violent, raging, burst of hot molten rock. It explodes. It erupts. It hisses. It flashes. It sparks. Even at dusk, it was impressive.

As the sky darkened, the colour of the magma brightened.

By nightfall, it was the only light. Taking pics with a handheld point-and-shoot camera was extremely challenging. Videos were almost impossible. Lots of more knowledgeable and/or more prepared people with full DSLRs and tripods. We made do with what we had. Eeringly quiet despite some 200 people being around our little area trying to look over shoulders, get a bit higher on the magma near us. You could have gone closer to the sea, bypassed the fence and walked closer. No real security to stop you, but fortunately we didn’t have any stupid people with us that night. I’d love to be able to do that scene again with my DSLR. We got some good shots, but a better zoom would have been awesome, too.

I’m going to close with five videos.

First, I promised a copy of the full helicopter video (broken into three videos). It’s great, but I warn you, the trip is almost an hour long. Probably not something you’re going to plow into unless you’re really dedicated.

The fourth video is from the night lava and shows a lot of the plumes.

The fifth video is the money video…it shows fireworks going off by the magma, which was mother nature’s contribution to the night. They’re not actual fireworks, it’s just the magma sparking.

Another awesome day in Hawaii, and our last night in Hilo. Sigh. I know that we went to Kona next, it’s not like the vacation was over, but Hilo was our introduction to Hawaii, and despite the amazing scenery to come, Hilo will always remain a bit special in my heart. On to day 5…

Honeymoon recap 03 – Hilo hotel, volcano park and a lava tube

January 26 2015

Andrea and I awoke to a slightly cloudy, hazy day on Day 3. High on my personal bucket list, and even higher on our trip “to-do” list, was to see the volcano. We had seen an old lava field the day before, but we knew that there was an official volcano park, with exhibits and active steam vents and lava fields, oh my! So, off we went for the day. The main road that goes along the southern coast of the island passes right through the park — it’s the only road — so it is extremely easy to find. Once you get close, you can see that, yes, this is still an active volcano — smoke and steam are constantly rising through microsteam vents. The ground smokes constantly around the upper caldera.

As a tourist, lots of the crevices look like the volcano is extremely active, but of course, it’s not. It’s just that the heat has to go somewhere (no lava at these spots), and it burns as it escapes, so there is steam and smoke.

The volcano consists of three layers really: up top (where the picture below is taken from), a “mid-level base” of the volcano that you can see at the base of the cliff (i.e., the floor of the caldera), and then a large “active” pit where the smoke is billowing up.

The mid-level floor is traversable by foot, and you can hike quite close, apparently to the edge of the lower pit. However, it is rated a difficult hike in terms of the uneven terrain of sharp lava rock, plus there are pockets of sulphur gas. Not enough to kill you, probably, but also not recommended for those in less than average health or with respiratory problems. We passed on the hike, and just observed from the upper caldera.

Steam vents and pockets dot the floor of the volcano.

But it’s hard to wrap your brain around the sheer size of the pit until you see little people way down there hiking along. The depth and scale were awe-inspiring.

Hey, look, Panda in a volcano!

Once you leave the main caldera area, you can drive down a long long long road to the sea to see where an old lava flow passed through leaving behind a dead lava field. You’ll see on a map below that there are essentially three areas of lava, if you were looking at the island from the sea.

On the right is the lava field we saw yesterday, which was about 10+ years old. Then on the left, you would have the pictures below, about five years old, but it covered up a previous one. In the middle (the steam plume you’ll see, and which you saw yesterday), is where the active lava continues to flow into the sea.

Below is an archway carved out by the sea.

This was the shoreline looking east and north along the coast, which had 5-year-old lava, then active lava, then 10-year-old lava.

We took pictures of Andrea and I in front of the old lava. This flow was a lot more “raw” than we had seen the day before. Larger, rougher, more elemental.

The reverse angle from yesterday of the steam plume from active lava hitting the sea.

A cold lava field — time to go hiking! Very careful, slow hiking.

Yes, we kind of got that message.

The lava rock creates incredibly complex and cool patterns as it cools.

And again, as with yesterday, strange colouring as the rocks cooled at different rates.

The field has “lava benches”, which are basically pockets of open space in the lava that can collapse. This was old lava, and a small pocket, so the danger was basically ripping your skin to shreds on the lava rock, but out at the shore, those benches could collapse and drop you 50 feet into the sea along with a couple of tons of rock. More dangerously, there are people who have hiked across the old lava until they get to the new lava, and keep on going until they are actually close to the active magma. I have friends who have photos of themselves 20 feet from an open vent hole, at the same park. They obviously have a different sense of risk than I do because. every year, there are people who end up having to be rescued out on the flows when they (a) become overcome by sulfuric gas; (b) trip and fall and hurt themselves badly on the sharp lava and can’t get back; (c) find their escape route blocked because lava shifted and holes opened up; or (d) lose their shoes because they melted and then they had nothing on their feet to traverse the lava rock for the trip back. Very few have actually died, but the locals think they’re all nuts.

This is where a road used to drive up to an old field, before a new lava flow covered it and the signage.

You can see the remains of the old road here.

This shot shows where the lava came down the hill, and how some of the vegetation is fighting its way back.

I thought this was the coolest tree I had ever seen. The photos really don’t do it justice. Stark white against a black background, but the hazy day and drifting steam and smoke gave me big challenges for light balance on a basic point-and-shoot camera.

These roosters are all over the island, and they run / live free. Some people suggested there were “chicken protection laws,” but the reality is that they are just really prevalent, often having escaped breeders and farms. It’s also an island (they can’t leave easily) and there aren’t that many local predators! So, we saw them everywhere, and I had to get a shot.

The picture below is kind of hard to see, again partly due to the haze but also in this case partly due to the distance, but this is the floor of the caldera, and running across the middle, slanting up to the left, is a heat line showing a different temperature at some point.

One of the cool things about magma is that it is a bit like water in that it takes the path of least resistance (fyi, magma and lava are essentially the same thing, with magma being below the surface and lava being on the surface). However, unlike water, resistance thresholds have to be pretty high to resist magma, and when magma flows, it creates giant lava tubes (technically magma tubes) like the one below. Often these are just left filled in when the lava cools or the tunnel/tube collapses, but in this case, it just left a hollow tube which is now a tourist attraction.

Andrea and I went to another one while we were in Hilo…kind of a strange setup. The guy basically had moved there with his dad from Oregon and bought the tube entrance as a business. Yep, not the tube; he just bought the entrance. You pay him some money, and he takes you down a few rough steps to a trail that descends into a lava tube and runs about 200 feet underground. At that point, the cave starts to shrink down, and while the tube goes on for several miles, snaking and interconnecting (there were other entrances, and they were mapping it for spelunker types), you wouldn’t want to do it if you were even remotely claustrophobic. Apparently, some of the “gaps” were basically not much thicker than your body before the tube would open up again into a larger cavern. Gives me the willies just thinking about it. The one below was nice and spacious, and not very long. The floors were really quite smooth. I couldn’t get a great shot because of the lighting, so I’m including a postcard version.

Two pandas at the end of the tube (or at least the end of the public portion).

To wrap things up, I have included two videos after the sign-off block. The first is the lava field by the shore and the second is a grainy video of the inside of the lava tube. Enjoy!

Honeymoon recap 02 – Tide pools and lava fields

January 25 2015

Andrea and I awoke to a beautiful day on day 2. We were staying in Hilo, and since we had come in from the Northern coast, our goal for Day 2 was to start exploring South. Primarily that was a tidal pool area and an old lava field.

We basically drove South along the coast to get our day started, and we soon found a small beach with some waves rolling in over a protected reef.

Looking North along the Coast past Hilo, you could see the Island rise towards the centre.

Just next to the beach was a nice little pond area, with great colours and trees.

It was awesome driving through the side roads, as the tree canopy was almost complete in some places.

We continued even farther south to a tide pool area. Now, according to the guidebooks, some of the best and warmest tide pools are on private land, and while the books almost encouraged trespassing, we decided to opt for a public park instead. It didn’t disappoint. There was some awesome black lava rock hugging the shore. Waves crashing against the rocks.

It was great seeing some of the mild surf too.

After six months of wedding planning, it was nice to relax again!

A fisherman worked the shore, and seemed to be catching stuff, although I had no idea how.

Of course, even the little ponds had fish in them, so it wasn’t a lack of abundance.

The tide pool was quite large, and fairly warm. Not very deep for most of the area, but in the centre, it was up to your neck if you were on your tip-toes.

We headed further down the coast to an area that had been devastated years before by a lava flow, and was starting to show signs of rebirth. Of course, right next to the lava field, the jungle was going gangbusters.