Visiting Big Island and seeing live lava at Kahauale a 2 lava flow of Kilauea part 2

Into the belly of the beast

Jesper Sandberg

Introduction

It is hard to describe how incredibly special for me those days in Kilauea were and the insanely strong nostalgia for that. In part two I will take up the highpoint of that journey seeing the active 2014 Puu Oo flows in the steamy highland rainforests of Kilauea on the rainy side of the Big Island. This was for me and my father the highpoint of all past Hawaii visits, because this was the first time I got really close to lava, despite having visited Kilauea before as a small child and seen ocean entries with parents from a remote point. Back then good cameras where very expensive so getting good photos was a challenge. That of course had changed a lot in 2014 compared to 1998 and the earliest 2000’s. My father managed to get incredible photos of me at the 2014’s lava flows armed with only a small primitive  digital camera that was superior compared to ones we had much earlier trips to Hawaii. We are lucky we made analog copies of the photos as soon as we got home!  As told in part one, two years after Hawaii in 2016 our small good camera companion was lost forever in the Mekong River in Vietnam, when father stumbled in a wet river tour boat. The memory card and camera where lost forever in the river. Luckily analog copies at home meant that our precious memories where not lost, they where digitaly re-scanned in 2020. I have wanted to share this for years on VC.

Seeing an eruption is an incredible sight and Kilauea is the best place to do that, it is the world’s most active and individually the world’s most productive volcano by long term. It’s huge supply makes it possible to plan a trip a long way ahead and see an eruption. That makes it into the best tourist volcano on earth. It is nearly impossible to do on almost any other volcano expect a very few. In part two part  we find ourself in the Kilaueas Kahauale‘a 2 lava flow episode of early 2014. We also went in 2017 with 61G ocean entry watching and inspecting Leilani in winter 2019. But since the lava looks much the same, it is best to post about my most fun lava hike. Kilauea is hyperactive and by now in 2025 supply is near record high at the time of writing. The summit caldera is filling up by the eruptions and a new Puu Oo is maybe possible when magma moves out to the ERZ later.

In part two of my Big Island adventure we will re-live the the most fun parts of my 2014 adventure on the eastern side of the Big Island. Kilauea like the Big Island is such a large and complex place with so many hiking trails and geo-sites of interests that I have to limit myself to just what my own eyes saw and what me and father and our friends did and where. Warning! This post may contain images thats offensive to some traditional believers but I do not mean to offend anyone.

Preparations in Hilo

After tiring of the cold and low oxygen at 4 kilometers at Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and the dead Venusian looking lava wastelands along the observatory road, me, father and our friend from California took the rental car downhill to warmer and more liveable altitudes. In the car I did the same odd experiments with letting increasing air pressure crush mineral water bottles thats been opened and well sealed up at at Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa’s summits, letting the thicker air pressure crushing them in the lowlands. Hilo is right ahead 80 km away and two kilometers downhill driving the saddle road. Here is the windward side of the Big Island. A cloud sea of stratocumulus with isolated cumulus towers was right ahead. Here moist tropical air is forced upwards by the trade winds forming orographic rainfall, making the windward side of the Big Island ( Lower Puna, Hamakua, Hilo, Kau, Kohala districts ) one of the rainiest and greenest areas in the world. What is not covered with recent lava flows from Mauna Loa and Kilauea is covered in lush rainforests. In the lowlands the heat and humidity at noon is simply overpowering even in winter if the tropical sun peeks out from the cloud blankets and shines on your back. The green steamy tropical rainforest enviroments here in Hilo are very different from the drier sclerophyllous ”Australian looking” vegetation that you find in the sunny drier lee side of the Big Island.

Arrival in Hilo was as green and nearly as warm as Singapore, the clear sunny Kona skies replaced by a grey sky with light raindrops. We arrive in Hilo in the evening and we spot yellow lamps and stylish neon lights twinkling in the dusk, and raindrops peck the car glass as the rental car drives down to the old district. Hilo is lovely. It looks like a tropical version of a wild west town with a charming Art Deco look to it that is combined with the local Hawaiian architecture. The locals are friendly and many of their 80’s, square and flat-looking retro cars are homely decorated with Polynesian patterns. We are also joined in the hotel by a FB friend coming down from Alaska’s freezer for warmth and fun lively lava. Hilo Seaside hotel was our base for the next two special days in Hilo before going back to Kailua Kona. Hilo is very beautiful but despite that I did not took a lot of photos. Hilo is as humid and nearly as warm as the equator, drenched mountain rainfall is one of the most even and least seasonal climates in the entire Hawaiian chain and the entire USA, making Hilo the most tropical place on the Big Island. It is classified as an equator type tropical rainforest climate. Here in an ultra green tropical paradise you can grow anything. It was ultra green perhaps even more so than the Azores and much warmer in winter. House owners grow all kinds of tropical fruits and decorative plants, in a seasonless tropical paradise their ”green vegetable pets” often escapes. The result is that lowland rainforests in Hilo, Puna and Hamakua are totally overrun by invasive weeds. Hilo’s forests are full of alien hardwood trees and weeds so by today they resemble very little of what native lowland Hawaiian rainforests used to be. Higher up at cooler climate elevations at Kilauea and Loa forests, native Ohia forests are in better shape but even Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has huge problems with invasive weeds. Invasive animals are also a giant problem for the island ecosystems on the volcanoes that arrives through plant trade and trade as pets. Tropical Hawaii is today full of ”alien organisms” that does not belong here, invasive plants, ants, reptiles, insects, amphibians and mammals are running amok in a friendly ”paradise climate” brought here by humans. It is a total ecological nightmare that very few talks about. Some invasive Hilo and Puna pests makes me nostalgic. Favorite is the chrip of Coquí frogs, one of the Islands baddest frog pests, whose beautiful chirp is now a true Hawaiian icon. The nostaliga is simply immense if I listen to these frogs today.. reminds me of these humid sleepless tropical nights we had in Hilo and Puna and the red eruption skies of Kilauea’s rainforests. Residents that tire of chirping frogs, lowland humidty and rotting warmth can move higher up Mauna Loa and Kilauea where the Gleenwoods, Volcano, Fern forest, Mountain View and Royal Hawaiian estates communities can be found, whoes steamy temperate cloudforests is a rather New Zealand looking experience with pleasantly warm days and chilly nigths in winter. The forest flora is also much more native there.

We disscused the possibility of doing the lava hike ourselves on that humid tropical evening while having dinner outside in the old Hilo district. In reality it would be very simple indeed. We drive the car towards fern forests misty cloudforests and locate the trail in the rainforest that goes out to Puu Oo s lava fields, by using gps and google earth and park the car there. I’m very familar with the area. But we came to the summary that its better to go with a local tour guide group, the pahoehoe lava fields are dangerous even if they are the most tourist safe type of surface eruption otherwise than the bubbling lava lake in halemaumau at same time. Getting lost in a place as big as Kilauea is disastrous too. You may die of thirst before you are found. We also discussed in the warm rain among the firefly like lights in..the near night, the edea the coming day before the lava hike to drive up to the astoningly beautiful HVNP.. but Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is a 52 km drive thats 110 km of driving. That would steal too much time for other stuff that is better used for preparations.

The lowlands in Hilo are hot and very humid and sleeping was not that sucessful even if AC was on and I could not get dry. The excitement inside me was growing with every hour as we booked a tour hiking trip through the rainforest and getting to see the lava! still I was worried as some locals at the resturants in both Kona and Hilo been critical calling the lava ”unaccessible”, indeed which it was compared to before 2013 when it flowed into the ocean, but I knew it was possible. We had booked a guide now even if we could do it by ourselves. The only real worry was perhaps the possible opening of a new side vent at Puu Oo s cone ( there was one day left before the lava hike! ). In Kilauea, things can change fast in a ”new york minute” even if Kilauea is a very constant lava provider indeed. This is the world’s most productive induvidual volcano so that keept me at least less worried of missing the lava. The next day was overcast but no rain. We started to load up on goods for the lava hike. We knew it would not be an easy hike, muddy and boggy and a good 10 kilometers hike through the forest back and fourth. We bought dark cholocate, nuts, peanuts and had with us dried meat. All these are energy rich, keep a stable blood sugar and keep you full. It was exactly what is needed for what’s to come. We also ready ourselves with raincoats and good shoes. Having no time that day at driving up to Halemaumau we did explore Rainbow Falls and Hawaii tropical botanical gardens. Onomea Bay is very beautiful and we spent lots of time there that day I clearly noticed the seawaters being more much murky than in crystal clear Kona side due to the river runoff, caused by all orographic rainfall here.

Through the swamp of sorrows

 

I don’t remember much more than getting up early, immensely excited for the tour bus to arrive to our hotel. The noise from the Hilo airport made resting hell anyway for the hike out to the lava fields. Me father and two other companions awakened early and got ready fast for it. We had packed backpacks and good hiking shoes with thick soles ( that would soon melt! ). I knew it was a muddy trail through the fern forest so was ready with worn out long pants, little did I know how difficult the trail would be. The buss arrived early and there where at least 10 others I think that booked the same hike. And off we drove upslope. Kilauea is simply a gigantic volcano it made Etna feel like a dwarf and I did not notice that we were driving upslope a volcanic mountain, as we climbed upwards the long long Hawaii belt road that can take you all way down to south point at Kau. From a frog’s perspective Kilauea is invisible. I was also surprised how insanely smooth Kilauea is despite all rain with no sign of river erosion but that is expected for a hyperactive shield volcano which is the chase of most Big Island’s volcanoes. The daytime muggy thick heat of Hilo gives way to milder pleasant warmth of the temperate highlands. We are now about 40 kilometers upslope ( middle Kilauea) at 1000 m. The bus turns to a smaller road and in it goes on a smaller road that would be left of my seat. The bus stops at Fern Forest, me and father and the rest of what is now a huge tour party steps out as the engine stops vibrating. Our tour guide now presents us with the un-assuming trail as we are all given wooden walking poles ( which we would disrespectfully push into liquid lava later ) and the whole column of people starts to move into this forest. The trail appears to be of native Ohia trees and small native birds likey Apapane flicker like flying darts between the trees. The native rainforest is dense and lots of ferns and fallen logs, at first the trail is very easy with only a few water pools that you can easily avoid. The day is a light grey overcast sky and apparently it had been raining a lot two days before. Due to the tropical sun’s intensity it did not feel gloomy despite a steel overcast. The trail through the rainforest from the nearest house to the tube fed lava flows is about 5 kilometers long and 7 to 3 meters wide. The easy walking makes way to more and more mud that is red brown and very tropical African looking. At first the mud is just a centimeter deep and I who is light and young avoids it by walking on fallen logs while 60 year old father just carefully goes through it. It is a beautiful sight with fern trees, native ohia trees and moss everywhere and pleasant temperatures. The sky is soon not visible anymore as the rainforest canopy closes in with a narrower and narrower trail. Deeper in the forest the trail conditions deteriorate even further with both standing mud pools and slippery logs every kilometers. It gets slower the further in the column of hikers goes and by 2 kilometers inside, the trail has become a real challenge indeed with reddish mud as deep as your lower half of the lowermost leg in some areas that means your pants and shoes gets messed up by all the dirt. Soon everyone has muddy legs and shoes and the column of lava tourists moves very slowly indeed the mud and grime makes it a such drag. Some parts, say 500 m, can take 90 minutes to cover. It was awful. In the hardest parts you sink down to your knees in the mud making progress nearly impossible and there was one part that was hard enough that even I almost gave up with it when the boots filled with slurry. In other parts of the trail the going is much easier where fallen logs can be used as bridges over the most annoying mud pools.

The trail to Puu Oo s lava fields was a difficult one but not impossibly difficult, just very annoying. But for a person with less than average health in terms of legs it would be a very questionable hiking trail at least that day, the mud in places was impossible to avoid and quite deep. Luckily we never got stuck as most of the mud seemed to lack that quality but it was still a very difficult mud that burned off many hours that day. During such activity it is important to eat and drink and 3 hours in the tour party from the buss of I think 15 persons stopped for food and rest, with waterlogged boots and muddy pants I sat on a moss clad tree fern stump and we spent 15 minutes eating as much as I could. As many peanuts as I could, half a bar of dark chocolate and a whole load of dried meat was washed down with half a liter of water. Father, and in fact everyone, was gulping down food. If we don’t eat or drink, the conditions could be lethal if we ran out of energy and water is crucial. We had plenty with us. If you run out of energy or lack body reserves you could end up stuck unable to do the whole ordeal back and end up stuck here and that could be fatal in the worst chase. There is still a couple of kilometers to go before we came out on the lava fields and the trail was very difficult in places, it was impossible to believe that such a lush, green boggy place was the world’s most active volcano. Father did not snap any photos from the trail. It only exists in my memories, we just only wanted to go to the lava flows that kept us going forward and we must also of course do the same absolute hell on the way back from the lava flows.

After my giant ”keto meal” I felt sluggish but as the fat later began to burn inside my cells 20 minutes later I felt fresh that I had enough energy to keep going through this muddy mess, avoiding the deep mud and standing water when I could. Father who is older less mobile still managed to push along very well. In terms of difficulty from one to ten where one is running and ten is nigh impossible, I gave the trail as it was during that special day a solid seven in that scale, so its a pretty hard one. Had all the mud filled pools had a sucking ability at boots then the trail woud have gotten a nine on the rating. There were of course days when it was a much more easy trail, but when we did it it was quite tough. The hardest part was about 60% into the forest trail to Puu Oo, then there was a good decrease in difficulty. Had the climate been drier it woud been an easy trail. Walking the open smooth concrete like pahoehoe fields was a child’s play compared to the forest trail, where you could even runn ( as long as you were not at active flow front ). Struggling with the mud, fetid pools and rotting tree stems, we all hoped for the advancing lava field to completely incinerate this ”awful” place with all its ills that was in reality a beautiful native highland Kilauea rainforest.

In Pele’s claws ( most photos at the end of this post: see far below text )

After many hours of treking through the ”forest of horrors” the pace began to become more easy and there were sinister or rather very exciting signs of what to come. The trees, once so ever lush, once so ever fresh began to look sickly and yellow and brown leaves began to appear, it was the inferno’s acid gases that were killing the living green. When seeing these signs everyone picked up the pace. It could only be about 100 meters further. And sure enough the forest trail’s end was seen and the fluid dark grey mass of numerous pahoehoe lobes that spilled into the forest trail were clearly obvious. The path out to the active lava flow fields flows was right ahead. Carbon charred ohia trees and tree ferns and brown leaves was a sign that the pahoehoe lava likey spilled into here just a week or a few weeks ago or something like that. We were lucky that the lava flow front was not active just here at the forest edge, as pahoehoe flowing over vegetation and waterlogged ground can result in dangerous methane explosions and steam bursts. The whole crowd got very happy with the walking sticks held high when we finally made it out on the active pahoehoe lava fields.

Kilauea’s lava flows are one of the world’s hottest and most fluid, so it’s lava flows when tube fed forms smooth pahoehoe that is very easy to walk over. It is very different from the more viscous lava flows of Etna that is nearly impossible to walk over. When I got outside there on the pahoehoe lava fields, the landscape was simply vast compared to the narrow corridor confines of the rainforest. Looking around I could see steam and smoke plumes at forest edges in the distance, there active hot live lava were flowing into the forest edges burning vegetation. We did not hike into these for saftey reasons. The landscape was a completely otherwordly sight! And because of the recent heavy rains, heavy steam plumes rose from the smooth hummocky landscapes of the Kahauale‘a 2 pahoehoe lava flow fields. I was a sight that evoked scenes of impending doom. This island is paradise but it is also the biggest hell in the world that flowed right below our feet!. Jacob the tour guide spoke briefly on the hazards of an active tube fed lava field and how it works. For me that is very familiar because I had been following activity over Kilauea since a small child,  but now I was very excited for seeing live lava in person. When hiking active lava flows on Kilauea it is very important to use good shoes to protect against hot newly formed ground, to use good clothes and gloves, even smooth fresh pahoehoe lava crusts is more than razor sharp. The lava flows we were walking on were perhaps only two weeks old or so, they had inflated a lot as more lava from the tube system below accumulated and lifted up the original thin flow surface many meters. This meant that active 1160 C basaltic lava was maybe a person’s height below us. Steam poured out of cracks in inflated crusts with the sickly smell of sulfur. Walking was very easy indeed as it was almost like someone had poured runny concrete everywhere. Father, me and friend were very excited as the tour guide began to search for active ”breakouts” breakout, which is an active runny flow lobe that spills out from an overinflated lava crust that crust over and swells up and breaks out again. The slowest flow lobes advance as lobes, a little like pillow lava but more flat. The faster lobes forms sheets that develop a ropey skin.

The Kahauale‘a 2 flow that we now searched for active breakouts is vast. A mature single pahoehoe field fed by one tube can have thousands of breakouts along the edges that we tried to avoid. The lava field itself was fed by a lava tube, a tunnel from an underground river of lava kilometers upslope fed by a small lava pond at Puu Oo that fed the flow field downhill where we were hiking. Placing my hand on virgin ground that is more than 20 years younger than myself I noticed how sharp the lava crust was, with almost glass-like fibres. Small chips stuck in the hand of me. Here a stumble or fall woud be disastrous, scarping away the skin of an entire lower leg if that happened, and if you break the crust and fall into an active breakout that results in burning to death, so running around here in the middle of an active lava flow field is not an option. In this environment good hiking boots and welders’ gloves are a must have. The whole tour group closely followed the tour guide for saftey. I was also very surprised in just how grey and shiny the lava flows are when the sun came out, after all massive basalt is almost black. The grey is caused by stretched glass bubbles in the fluid of the expanding lava toes, breakouts. Those bubble walls is where the sharp glass chips came from that got stuck in my hand. The gloves and body protection is very useful here against such a sharp and abrasive environment even if fluid pahoehoe is very smooth. It is a sinister hellish landscape. Water vapour steam rises everywhere that reminded me of Mordors Gorgoroths plains below Mount Doom ( Puu Oo flank vent of Kilauea is a good analog here). We made every attempt to avoid the rising steam plumes from the lava field after the recent flash floods. Clouds of suffocating steam that rises from lava flows can kill a person with displacing all the the oxygen around them. A few years later Big Island photographer Sean King was killed just by that thing.

The ground crunches nicely as half a milimeter sized glass bubbles break under our feet and the ropey lava surfaces are very nicely visible, the pahoehoe ground is warm to touch not only in inflation fissures so I knew we were getting close. Active tube fed pahoehoe flows like these that has been going for almost 30 years at that time is a rather unspectacular form compared to Leilani or Holuhraun, most of the lava flow is covered by a thin silvery reflective crust and active flowing lava river canals or fountains are non–existent in this type of activity. Most of the lava is having an insulating skin, but it was still the sight of a lifetime for many visitors! And we are very close indeed. I remember seeing a red 800 c glow in deep fissures in the lava flows inflated crust in a cracked low inflation mound, such as are everywhere, swollen but still not quite a tumulus and much flatter. We were getting very close indeed and we started to feel sick from sulfur that escaped as blue gas from glowing deep cracks in the flow fields crust. There!! shouts my father and points the wooden pole towards a low inflation mound full of ropey breakouts, and there it was! Something moves and a glowing yellow lobe oozes out, shiny yet yellow, the whole crowd of 15 cheers in joy with the walking pole sticks held high like an Arabian sword dance. The lava breakout flows downhill very fluid, its surface cools quickly turning from yellow- white to yellow to orange to dull orange to red and quickly to a shiney grey when the atmosphere chills a thin flexible glass crust. Very soon the pahoehoe ropes starts to form, a crackling sound is heard too from expanding microbubble walls. We jump in joy seeing the birth of liquid rock and new land the lava tongue fluid moves at many centimeters per second crackling. Above the breakout the air shimmers from the extreme heat escaping from the breakout. The breakout is a part of a whole section of flowing lava lobes, creeping foreward, deforming, crackling expanding. The tour party films as much as they can and we go closer to have a really close look at Pele’s liquid ground. Its a barren and otherwordly almost sickly landscape that was once a rainforest.

I am the first, going forward while my father films and photographs me armed with my walking stick held forward. I go forward towards the fractious heat of the breakout, and in an instant of addiction I plunge my waking stick in the soft fluid pahoehoe lava! all live and flowing. Other hiking members in our tour party soon follow that behaviour. The pole penetrates the fluid lava with ease that now flows beside me. When I tore through the thin glass skin, combustible gases jets out from the hole. When the pole is inside the lava hot flow and a hissing sound is heard and roaring flames spew out. This was the wood that is decomposing into flammable gases in the 1160 degrees C of the flow interior. Out comes a yellow blob that cools quickly into grey. The lava flow’s flexible surface is much cooler. Lava has low conductivity and the surface quickly chills to a insulating crust and many of our tour friends are struggling to measure the temperature of the surface with their handheld lasers pistols, for that you needs a penerating probemeter that volcanologists use to give corrrect readings under the crust skin. Father also takes a shot at poking the flowing lava breakout and plunges his pole as well deeply into a swelling live slivery pahoehoe lobe. While father photographs and films I keeps messing aroung with liquid lava. It is so hot that I can barely stand it, and the sulfuric fumes smelling like fireworks makes me feel sick, yet I love that smell too. I noticed while messing around with this lava from Puu Oo how fluid it is, yet how dense it is and how much more viscous it is than it’s appearance suggests and how heavy it is and how fast it cools when spatter is drawn out from a breakout flow. I was so happy that I almost went into some kind of trance. Everyone in the tour party had now found their own pahoehoe breakouts to mess with and many were taken out glowing glops of basalt that cooled quickly on their wooden poles. Both lava and wood have low conductivity. The wooden poles likely had very little contact with the lava when we plunged them into a breakout or lobe. The combustion gases prevented direct contact and flames that were combustible gases roared out when lava was penetrated and ignited when in contact with Earth’s atmosphere. When pulled out the wooden pole was only a little blackened and nothing else. They where likely fresh wet wood as well as they did not retain fire when pulled out from the lava. My father photographed many times when suitable breakouts were active, many breakouts here alive for minutes before they stopped, the more sluggish breakouts had somewhat thicker skins, and puncturing the skin of such lobes yields a hole and out comes a expanding hot ”lava ball” to seal the wound in the lava’s crust. Pahoehoe lava flows advance with a very typical pattern with swelling lobes and inflating crusts and folding skins. The surface is overall always keept smooth, which only very low viscosity lava flows can do.

After messing around for a while with Pele I heard a cracking sound and a much larger 10 meters wide lava tongue, half a foot thin, fluid and glowing hot rushed foreward from an inflated ”mound” and a silvery sheet creeps forward from a yellow hot extrusion point. The lava crust around is thin and bubbly and pieces can with ease be kicked loose. In my addiction I threw a large piece in the breakout and big orange ribbons of fluid lava splashed up everywhere cooling into silvery sheets. The tour guide Jacob ran to me and laughed and warned me to not do that again in case I would splash myself or another person with hot lava, as I underestimated the high fluidity of this lava. While very fun to experience this and really go and mess with lava flows and learn how liquid basalt behaves, messing around with Kilauea’s lava is in reality very disrepectful indeed towards the local Hawaiian culture. In Hawaii lava is Kino Lau ”body form” of Pele and by doing all these craziness I was severely poking the firegod! In HVNP we do not poke the lava, we do not steal lava, we do not pee in the lava and we do not incinerate our trash in the lava flows, it is a watch-and-see thing and leave nothing behind. I was young and perhaps immature and in later lava visits I did not do this. More ”disrespectful” behaviour was seen by others tour groups too not only by me. I remember a woman dragging out liquid lava with her walking pole, from a rupture in the skin out comes a brillant hand sized orange splat that is dragged and kicked away from the lava front, there its allowed to cool for 30 min and later she cools it further with water. After its cold enough it goes into her backsack and later home to Europe as ”stolen trophy”.

Feeling the need to pee I hide from the tour party behind a low 3 m high and 40 meters broad inflation mound, doing the thing in a crack.. where a hellish yellow glow could be seen two meters down, and a hissing sound was heard and an acrid fume resulted. Father unsure what was active or inactive pahoehoe, worried to walk anywhere, began to look and we were reunited. We also let our friends photograph us. The photography has to be done quickly to avoid us being surrounded by swelling lava flows. There is a hazard even if this is the most gentle of all tourist activity beside lava lakes. After lunchtime the weather got more sunny and tropical solar rays shone on shiney fluid looking lava flows. I was surprised that fresh flows where grey and older ones where darker, perhaps due to the thin bubble glass being chipped away in older lava flows, but some fresh pahoehoe lava flows in USGS archives are darker than new, still I guess that my theories are correct in this case. We had plenty of lava breakouts that whole day and I estaimate that my eyes saw at least ten medium sized breakouts with over a sixty small lava toes. Individual lava flow tongues haves a slow eruption rate, but up at the vent kilometers away the eruption rate was a few cubic meters per second at the lava tube opening, that eruption rate is then channelized downhill and spread out over a wide area. This type of eruption can last decades, even centuries on Kilauea because it is erupted at mantle supply rates so is the ideal tourist eruption, Kahauale‘a 2 lava flow was feed into nearly flat ground so advancement in the forest was incredibly slow despite the lavas fluidity. Many other later pahoehoe flows at Kilauea had faster supply and eruption rates.

Playing around with the pahoehoe lava was very interesting. I noticed how dense this fluid is, it is strange indeed. Lava have a density of around has a density of 3100 kg/m3 and light things such as apples seems to simply bounce off the lava even if this lava is very fluid, but that could also be due the thin outer moving skin. I was also interested in watching the outer skin move on a fresh breakout, how it keeps being flexible and deformable even if it is not glowing. It is likely a combination of heat and thinness that keeps it so flexible so the pahoehoe’s skin can fold like cloth. The thin skin starts forming as soon as hot lava touches the atmosphere. Lava with higher viscosity cannot form such features, such as at Etna. My father was photographing all the time given up more time to enjoy the lava himself. The photographs themselves are valuable memories. I was also able to reproduce Pele’s hair by ripping quickly through the crust of a swelling lobe, a so called ”pahoehoe toe ”, out comes yellow – white hot glass fluid leaving whitish glass trails that reflect in the sun. The lava globs pulled out flattens quickly as they hit the ground and cool almost instantly. After just under a minute you can if you are very fast touch the pieces with a finger even if these lava pieces will be very hot indeed so a very quick poke. USGS personal tends to cool lava samples in water buckets after scooping up a sample with a hammer. Had we had thicker glassmakers furnace gloves we might been able to play around with very small molten lava globs in our hands until they became too cold to deform. An extremely hot material at Puu Oo 1150 – 1160 C that is hotter than the average crematorium. Up at Halemaumau it is about 1210 c so even hotter still, extreme care is important. Playing around with the molten lava reminded me of liquid soda glass, but the lava is not as stretchy as soda glass and it was likely more fluid than soda furnace glass. Everyone in the tour group was enjoying Kilaueas flowing lavas and it was time for lunch two: eating food and drinking water was once again incredibly important to cope physically with such a hot and acrid and downright nasty hot environment. I remember one tour member with gloves having a small metal spade scoping up hot liquid lava from a small swelling pahoehoe toe and flatteing it as a hot pancake that went from yellow hot to solid and dark grey. That hot ”lava pancake” she made was later crushed to pieces under my own hiking boots. A tour member also incinerated a banana, watching it dissappear under that moving slivery lava sheet with a orange edge. In the skies chopper blades where heard quite loudly and the insect like machine was seen in the sky, that was very likely Paradise Helicopters carrying local photographers Mick Kalber and Bruce Omori.

By now after a whole day most of our shoes bottoms had long melted walking on a recent lava flow crusts that was well over 100 degrees C, possible over well over 200 C in places, making it very hard to find a place to rest and eat without burning your butt. The smell of sulfur and metallic odours mixes with the smell of burnt rubber shoe bottoms. My own shoe thread pattern was by now completely gone with abrasive lava glass fiber needles stuck in the rubber. I even very briefly poked the soft hot flexible crust of a lava toe with tip of my shoe that flamed up, I coud not resist. The weather cleared up more as late afternoon came. By early evening it was time to get home to Hilo. The falling darkness makes these totally hellish lava landscapes even more hellish and scenic, every inflation crack that was steaming is now glowing like Mordor’s plains, the lava breakouts more colorful than ever in the fading light. As night came the landscape are now glowing red in many places, fiery steam plumes spew from glowing cracks and other tour groups that just arrived from the forest enjoy the vividly glowing lava breakouts at nightfall. The sinister ”plains of gorgoroth” landscape really made it feel like the world was going to end. We were constantly surrounded by a display of natural wonders. The hot flowing lava perform beneath ballets of fluffy red illuminated the clouds above me. We were constantly surrounded by a display of natural wonders. The clouds slide across the sky until they join at the horizon to form whirling, flaming spectacles with Puu Oo and Halemaumaus glow, then thousands of glistening galaxies appear into deep black night and the nostalgic chirp of the coqui frogs starts when its almost dark. There is no bigger night landscape than the steamy Kilaueas flow fields. Still we were lucky to have done it during the day with very good photography conditions. The long hike back in the muddy trail was next which was not fun for either me or a tired father or our friends from the US. I have been on Kilauea a few times after this adventure and its definitely fun to have done this stuff! This trip turned out to to be the most memorable of them all getting that close to liquid lava! which in reality was perhaps too close.

What happened to the camera and original memory card

The mind completely races towards the Vietnam visit in 2016 when we rode the brown silty waters of the Mekong River. My father wanted to photgraph a large bird that seemed interesting on a good spot so he quickly wanted to change seat to get a view of what kind of odd species it was, but in the slippery boat father stumbled and the digital camera contaning our digital Hawaii memories was thrown by the force out of his hands and directly into the murky river, being lost foever with all our photos. Lucky the photos from the Kahauale’a 2 lava flows where made into analoug copies and have been re-scanned so we can enjoy this on Volcanocafe today.

PHOTOS CLICK TO ENLARGE: all where taken by my own father and by some friends: Im proud of sharing them on VC.

And some Coquí frogs to add some hawaiian sounds from the trail.

Jesper Sandberg February 2025