Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Big Island of Hawaii

The state of Hawaii is made up of six major islands (there are 19 in total if you include all the minor islands and atolls), each with its own distinct personality, landscape and reasons for visiting them. O'ahu is home to state capital Honolulu and the world famous beach resorts of Waikiki, and it is here that the majority of visitors to these islands end up. While O'ahu is the Hawaii of imagined paradise, the playground in the Pacific that attracts ...
...it for me was the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

The United States has many National Parks that you can justifiably describe as "spectacular": Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon would all easily fall into this category. The Hawaii Volcanoes National Park offers something a bit more, however. As well as being spectacular, it offers nothing less than the miracle of creation as a daily attraction; Big Island is an ... more

The state of Hawaii is made up of six major islands (there are 19 in total if you include all the minor islands and atolls), each with its own distinct personality, landscape and reasons for visiting them. O'ahu is home to state capital Honolulu and the world famous beach resorts of Waikiki, and it is here that the majority of visitors to these islands end up. While O'ahu is the Hawaii of imagined paradise, the playground in the Pacific that attracts millions of visitors each year - the place for sandy beaches, surfing, swimming in the safe and warm seawaters, and spending evenings at luaus - Big Island is an altogether different Hawaii. The largest of the Hawaiian islands, it is not called Big for nothing; it could hold all the other islands in the state with room to spare, yet only has 150,000 residents (about half of what the population was when Captain Cook first arrived here, incidentally) and despite having the state's second city in Hilo, has none of the big city edge of Honolulu. Visitation is low compared to O'ahu and Maui, and while the island does have tourist resorts on it (all clustered on a short stretch of the sunny Kona coast), it is basically a series of rural communities that have been surprisingly little touched by the demands of tourism in comparison to the rest of the state. Big Island is often described as Hawaii's island of adventure, as the rugged landscape, abundance of space and sparse population lends itself more to activities such as hiking, camping, kayaking, horse riding, mountain biking and nature tours that the more crowded beach-orientated islands to the north do. If you are staying in one of the Waikiki or Maui tourist meccas, then at least a day trip to the Big Island - easily possible and relatively inexpensive on one of Hawaii's budget airlines - is highly recommended as a way to help experience the complexity of these islands and to really understand that each one is distinctive. Despite the wide selection of adventurous activities available on Big Island, the key reason for visiting it for me was the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

The United States has many National Parks that you can justifiably describe as "spectacular": Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon would all easily fall into this category. The Hawaii Volcanoes National Park offers something a bit more, however. As well as being spectacular, it offers nothing less than the miracle of creation as a daily attraction; Big Island is an incomplete island and evolving landscape, with 230 hectares of land being added to the south of the island over the past 25 years, courtesy of the active volcanoes that give the park its name. In the 19th century, before tourism became synonymous with Hawaii, the big attraction of the islands for visitors wasn't the beach or the embarrassingly equitable climate as it is today, but rather these volcanoes. From the world over, curious travellers would gather around the highly active Kilauea to marvel at one of the great natural wonders of the planet, including Mark Twain, who later wrote of seeing "a heaving sea of molten fire" and "bursting gorgeous sprays of lava-gouts and gem spangles, some white, some red and some golden - a ceaseless bombardment, and one that fascinated the eye with its unapproachable splendour". Even now, nearly a century after the area was named a National Park, it remains the state's premier natural attraction. The park is in many ways unique; it is the only US National Park to contain an active volcano and the only one to have rainforest, and the volcanic topography has created seven distinct ecological zones over a relatively small area, ranging from the coast to desert, upland woodland and even the alpine environments of the peak of Mauna Loa. Visiting the park is a once in a lifetime experience in so many different ways. I find volcanoes to be endlessly fascinating phenomenon, and although I have seen volcanic landscapes in the past - I have hiked up Vesuvius in Naples and visited the volcanic rift zone of Iceland - I have never seen active volcanism. I hoped that the National Park would finally give me the opportunity to view lava for myself, as it has an enviable reputation for offering safe lava viewing to visitors (it is what volcanologists refer to as a "quiet" volcano).

The Volcanoes

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The Hawaii Volcanoes National Park contains two volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Kilauea, although it is the latter that is the main focus point of the park. Mauna Loa (meaning "long mountain") is a huge peak that covers half of the Big Island and holds the distinction of being the largest volcano in the world - the base of the volcano stretches down to the sea floor and is a massive 17km below its tip - although it hasn't erupted since 1984. The peak stands at 4,170m about sea level and often has snow on it, making the Big Island a bizarre combination of ice and fire. Indeed, our guide informed us that at Christmas snow is brought down from the peak in vans for local children to play with! Kilauea is to the south of Mauna Loa and is the younger and much more active of the two volcanoes, with the last eruption lasting continuously from 1983 to the present day (it is so active in fact that, "every 5 days, there is enough lava coming out of Kilauea volcano's eruption to place a thin veneer over Washington, D.C. - all 63 square miles"). Being younger, this volcano has not yet built up a peak and appears instead as a bulge on the southern flank of Mauna Loa with a large caldera (crater) on the top. This volcano is also notable as the home of Madame Pele, the local volcano goddess, whose anger is said to cause the eruptions. Fortunately this anger does not produce explosive Mount St Helens style eruptions; the lava in the Kilauea area is a thick, slow-moving kind that oozes from the ground, often pouring dramatically into the sea or producing glowing rivers of lava.

The volcanoes of Big Island were formed as a result of a curious geological phenomenon known as a "hot spot". While today this term is more often used to refer to an area of good wireless broadband reception, in geology is means something a little, well, hotter. Big Island is part of a chain of islands and seamounts (submerged volcanoes) that stretches 3,700 miles to the north and west from Big Island across the Pacific. Each of these land masses was originally formed at the place where Big Island is today, as the result of a plume of lava that has broken through a weak spot in the ocean's crust; as the ocean floor moves over this weak area or hot spot at a rate of about 4 or 5 inches a year, the upwelling lava gradually creates new land, effectively making a steady conveyor belt of volcanic islands. The position of the hot spot today means the southern part of Big Island - where the National Park is - is actively volcanic, while islands further back in the chain have moved away from the source of lava and are therefore extinct volcanoes. This process has been going on for a long time; the oldest parts of the chain, the Emperor Seamounts, are thought to be more than 70 million years old. Perhaps not surprisingly the hot spot is also at work starting up a new island south of Big Island, that is estimated to reach the surface of the ocean in about 10,000 years' time.

Kilauea Visitor Centre

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Located near the park's entrance, the visitor centre is the first stop for the 2.6 million people who visit the Hawaii volcanoes every year (there used to be a second visitor centre on the southern coast of the park, but this was destroyed by eruptions of Kilauea in the late 1980s). The centre has a set of modest museum-style displays introducing you not only to the volcanoes in the park, but also to the local wildlife and plants; as well as being geologically significant, the park has an array of unique flora and fauna, with over 90% of the native species only being found on the Hawaiian islands, the highest rate of endemism anywhere in the world. The displays are quite interesting and are a good introduction to the area, and there is also an excellent book shop within the centre that I found well worth a browse. The visitor centre has a good-sized auditorium to the rear showing a programme of free films about the park every hour (the most prominent being the 30 minute long "Born of Fire, Born of the Sea"), which are well meaning but have fairly poor production standards and are remarkably dull for films about such a fascinating topic. If you only have a limited amount of time available to explore the park, I would suggest skipping the films in favour of a good guidebook that you can take out with you. Do collect one of the park guides and maps from here, though; they are free and will help you not only get the most from your visit, but only to use the park safely (you are entering an active volcanic area, after all, and this should be kept in mind the whole time you are in the park). The visitor centre is also the first stop on the crater rim drive, a road which takes you in a big loop around the Kilauea caldera, allowing you to view the volcano from a series of safe and stunning vantage points.

The Jaggar Museum

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The Jaggar Museum is probably the most popular stop on the crater rim drive. Home to the Hawaii Volcano Observatory (founded by Dr Thomas Jaggar in 1912), it is about a 10 minute drive from the visitor centre, and offers displays more focussed on the volcanology of the park than the generalist introduction that the visitor centre provided. While the observatory itself is not open to the public, it was built here for the very good reason that this spot offers one of the best views over the Kilauea crater, and you can enjoy it both from the outside observation points and from inside the museum if the weather is inclement. From photographs I had seen prior to coming to the museum, the views offered sweeping vistas over the enormous crater (which apparently was once home to an entire lake of lava) with Mauna Loa looming dramatically in the background; it was breathtaking to say the least and I looked forward to seeing it for myself. However, when we visited it seemed that Madame Pele was less than happy, as the volcano had started emitting copious amounts of volcanic gases a few days previously. While there was no evidence of this at the entrance to the park, as we drove further along the crater rim road we began to notice what looked like a light mist hanging over the landscape. The closer we got to the crater, the thicker the mist became, until we arrived at the Jaggar Museum to find a fog so thick that the road continuing around the rest of the rim drive had been closed off to traffic. Stepping outside quickly revealed this fog was in fact sulphurous gases (in other words, it smelt of rotten eggs); apparently this is what the locals call "vog", short for volcanic smog. Every so often the vog would clear enough to allow us to catch glimpses of the lunar landscape of the crater below us with plumes of gases escaping from vents, but we couldn't see anything beyond the crater - including Mauna Loa - at all.

Standing around in vog for more than a few minutes isn't that comfortable - apart from the smell, it stings your eyes and the back of your throat - so we moved inside to see what the museum had to offer. As well as the typical dioramas and exhibits you might expect, the museum has an interesting collection of equipment used by scientists to investigate and monitor the volcanoes. The most interesting of these is a seismograph that has been set up to show you how sensitive the machines are at recording tremors; try stamping or jumping on the floor in front of it and you can see your actions plotted on the seismograph's chart as a mini earthquake. The other really notable display was of an old protective suit that was used by volcanologists in the 1950s to help them get close enough to active areas to take measurements and samples. This particular suit was worn by an unlucky man who stepped on a lava crust thinking it was solid rock, and had one leg fall through into the lava below. Remarkably he survived, but the charred suit with the missing leg stands as a testament to just how dangerous monitoring and researching the Hawaii volcanoes can be. The displays were squarely aimed at visitors with no prior knowledge of volcanoes, but for those wanting more in-depth information the National Park's second bookshop can be found here and offers an impressive range of geological titles.

The Thurston Lava Tube

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Unable to continue around the rim drive to the far side of the crater, we instead retraced our route to the park entrance and began to follow the other side of the rim drive loop, which was still accessible. Situated on the North Eastern edge of the park, the Thurston lava tube shows the volcanic landscape in an altogether different light from the ruggedly barren crater of Kilauea. A lava tube is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a tube made by lava. They form in large, slow-moving flows of viscous lava, when the surface of the flow cools and hardens into a crust, but channels of lava continue to move underneath, effectively creating underground rivers of molten rock. Under the right circumstances, it is possible for these rivers to drain away, leaving their channels as tubes cutting though the surrounding volcanic rocks; if one end of the tube becomes exposed, the effect is like a cave system. Lava tubes are often quite small and narrow, so the Thurston lava tube stands out as impressively large, being 135m in length between the two access points (there is a further undeveloped, unlit section of the tube with a dead end) and up to 12 feet high in places. What makes this geological masterpiece even more worthy of exploration is that it is situated in a patch of lush rainforest, an abundance of life that seems incongruous so close to the bare rocks and unpleasant gases of the volcano. A walking trail of about a third of a mile leads you in a loop from the crater rim drive through this, the only rainforest in the United States, and if you are quiet and patient you may be able to hear the singing of the honeycreeper birds in the canopy above you. A short distance along the trail leads you into the cool, damp world of the lava tube, before you emerge back into rainforest to head back to the main road. It was a very surreal experience, and I wish I had had the torch and time to carry on exploring more of the tube.

Lava Viewing

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The lava viewing, as I have mentioned previously, should have been the highlight of our visit to the National Park. Unfortunately nature doesn't work to order and the volcanic gases that has obscured the view at the Jaggar Museum were also at work in the areas of the park where lava was then erupting; we came up against another thick wall of vog, another roadblock and the advice that getting anywhere near the lava was far too dangerous, even if you could have seen anything though the gases. With great regret we had no choice but to turn around and instead appreciate some more recent after-effects of Madame Pele's work instead, which proved to be the only lava viewing we managed on our visit.

Although not in the park itself, I mention Kaimu beach as very much worth a visit if you are in the area as it demonstrates the power and destructive capabilities of Kilauea better than anything else I had seen. Kaimu (from the Hawaiian for "gathering at the sea") was once a popular seaside town with a beautiful black sand beach, on the south shore of the island just a couple of miles from the National Park boundary. In 1990 however, an eruption destroyed nearly all of the town, the bay and the beach, leaving then beneath many feet of lava - all that is left is what was once a beachside bar and shop, that now stands a quarter of a mile from the new shoreline. I recommend visiting this area because it will be unlike anything else you will have ever seen; a short distance away from the bar is a black rocky plateau, the top of which is now around 3 feet from the old road level. This plateau - which reaches down the sea and away to the National Park as far as the eye can see - is what is left of the lava flow that swamped this community, and in places you can see remains sticking out of it, including the roof of someone's car in one place. Exploring this landscape is incredible and gives you new respect for the volcano's power, and in a strange way its beauty. The lava flow isn't a monotonous sheet of black rock by any stretch; in places the minerals in the rock give it a bright reddish colour, and you can often see swirls on the surface that look like cake frosting where faster moving parts of the flow curled and span around (this is known locally as pahoehoe, which means "ropey lava"). If you make it to the shore, you can see where the new black sand beach is starting to form as the lava flow begins to be eroded by the sea. It will be a long time yet before the locals get a wide, tranquil surfer's beach again, but for now I rather admired the stark, dramatic beauty of the new coastline for all the destruction that had been wrought to produce it.

Concluding Thoughts

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At this stage, I risk using words like "spectacular", "breathtaking" and "stunning" so often that they begin to lose any impact - but how else can I describe such an incredible and unique place as this? In a way it is almost a good thing that I never saw lava in its constructive phase, as I would have surely run out of vocabulary to adequately describe it! Certainly missing the chance to see erupting lava was something of a disappointment at the time, as I would have dearly liked to have seen the vision of "hell and all its angels" that Twain reported seeing in 1866, but I saw so many other simply amazing sights (and all for a $10 admission!) that I can hardly complain of a wasted trip. Seeing the ferocity of the gases in the crater of Kilauea, and the impact that lava flows can have on local communities and landmarks at Kaimu will stay with me in particular, as they reinforce just how important it is not to underestimate Madame Pele - however unimpressed she was by our visit to see her. It was a place that will stay with me for the rest of my life, and if anyone reading this happens to be going to Hawaii, I would strongly suggest a day away from beaches and cocktails to explore this geographical marvel would be a day well spent.

Highly recommended.

Some Notes on Visiting the National Park

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Travelling to the National Park: To get to the National Park, you first have to get to Big Island. Inter-island flights depart regularly from Honolulu International Airport (where you are most likely to be travelling from, given this is the nearest airport to the tourist hub of Waikiki and the only major airport in Hawaii) and cost about $100 per person for a return trip on budget airline Go (about £73 when we travelled in March 2009). Flights also connect there from smaller airfields around the other Hawaiian islands (see http://www.iflygo.com/). Due to the sparse and spread out population on Big Island, there is almost nothing in the way of public transport, so make sure you have arranged in advance to go on an organised tour or to hire a car when you arrive. The entrance to the National Park is a 30 mile drive south west of Hilo on highway 11.

Opening Hours: The National Park is open 24 hours a day, year round. The visitor centre is open daily from 7.45am to 5pm, and the Jaggar Museum is open daily from 8.30am to 9.30pm.

Entrance Fees: Entrance is $10 per vehicle or $5 per person if you are on foot, bicycle or motorbike, and these passes are valid for 7 days. Children under 15 can enter the park free of charge. Once you are in the park, the visitor centre and museum have no further charges.

When To Visit: The National Park is a good place to visit all year round, but do take a light jacket or sweater with you whenever you go, and always carry rain gear. Due to the elevation of the volcanoes and their position towards the windward side of Big Island, it will feel cooler than if you are in any of the tourist resorts such as Kona or Waikiki, and be more likely to rain.

Safety: Although Mauna Loa and Kilauea not an explosive volcano like Mount St Helens, when you are in the National Park you are still standing on top of an active volcanic landscape and you need to treat it with respect. If you are hiking, stay on the marked trails and wear good shoes and long trousers to protect you if you fall on lava. Areas that have a lot of volcanic gases around should be avoided by infants, pregnant women and anyone with breathing difficulties or heart problems, and everyone should be prepared to leave the area or stay inside their car with the windows up if the concentration of gases gets very high. Never enter closed off areas, and always listen to instructions and advice from park rangers; be prepared to leave an area or evacuate the park if they tell you to.

Useful websites: http://www.nps.gov/havo/
http://www.hawaii.volcanoes.national-park.com/
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/

 

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