Up, up and away!

This past friday I got a bird's eye view of the entire Kilauea volcano from the summit crater down to the coast. I got to ride along on the weekly helicopter monitoring trip. It was amazing. Beautiful. Dynamic. Dizzying. Breathtaking. The list of adjectives could go on...but I will spare you.

Above is a picture of our teeny-weeny helicopter. From far away it looked like a toy helicopter. The aircraft holds three and the pilot. It has no doors, but you are strapped it securely. You also must wear a helicopter flight suit that is flame-resistant, a helmet, boots, and gloves. Below I am modeling my snazzy helicopter suit. Those things are comfy and flattering! I was tempted to keep mine on the entire day once we returned to the observatory, but after getting a bunch of weird looks I reluctantly took it off.

As a first time helicopter rider, my fellow geology crew had to escort me on and off the helicopter each time we landed. Which was three times. A note on riding a helicopter: always cross the front of the aircraft in view of the pilot. It lessens your chance of being hacked by moving blades.

We took off at 8:30 am at a helicopter pad in the park a.k.a a flat dirt patch in a remote part of the park. Though it took 20 minutes to get there by car from the observatory, it took a whopping two minutes to fly to the observatory. A view of the observatory is shown above.

Phase one of the flight involved circling the summit crater 2-3 times. This was the first time I experienced the vehicle tipping from one side to the other. My stomach flipped. But much to my surprise and happiness, I did not fall out. Neither did my stuff. That is when I started distracting myself by taking lots and lots of pictures.

After the summit crater, we zoomed over Pu'u O'o crater. The erupting gas plume was so large that we could not see into the crater. It looked like a smoking caldron.

We flew on to the active lava flows. These are the flows I have been mapping the past couple of weeks. A quick tour from the helicopter made the area seem so small. Hard to imagine it usually takes 2-3 hours to do our routine walk. Below is a picture of the the area we normally map.

It was misting a bit during our trip. As a result, a rainbow followed us throughout the trip. Below is one shot of our colorful companion.

The most spectacular part of the trip was seeing the ocean entry. The shimmering ocean just seemed to beckon me to come hither.

After mapping the flows by air, we took a brief stop near an active margin to take a lava sample.

Then we retuned to Pu'u O'o to fix the observation webcam.

Around 10:30 am we touched down for the final time. For the rest of the day, however, I remained on cloud nine.

Camping at Napau

A view of Napau Crater from the lookout point. Historically (within Kilauea's current eruption lifetime) Napau Crater has been an accomplice to the Pu'u O'o eruptions.

Some people (smart people?) go camping on the beach in Hawaii. I, on the other hand, went to the only rainforest campsite in the Hawaii Volcano National Park this weekend: Napau (shown in the photo above). It was wet and a good chunk of the trail meandered through thick brush and spiderwebs, but the views of Napau and the neighboring craters just about made up for it.

Kilauea is a rather large volcano with pockets of activity all over the place. In addition to the Kalapana lava flow fields and the summit crater, a major area of interest is Pu’u O’o crater. When Kilauea started erupting in 1983, the initial eruptions created Pu’u O’o crater. During the initial years of the now 27-year-old eruption, lava fountains built up a cone of splatter and activity remained at Pu’u O’o. While the magma source centered underneath Pu’u O’o, often times magma creeped around and oozed out of nearby fissures. One of these fissures was 4 km away and emptied into Napau crater.

After 3 years, activity at Pu’u O’o stopped. The fickle magma source moved to another location a few km away: Kupaianaha. But by 1992, the magma had returned to it’s initial home at Pu’u O’o. And not too long after in January 1997, lava erupted out of Napau crater once again.

The second, most recent love affair with Napau crater was brief, but sweet. Only a 24 hour event, this eruption is referred to as episode 54. Flows from this episode covered 48 acres and the eruption had minor lava fountains.

A view of Pu'u O'o crater in the background. This crater is still alive, kicking, and spewing out a thick gas plume.

Napau has yet to erupt since 1997. Instead, the crater has seen a different kind of activity in recent years: foot traffic. The Napau Crater trail is 14 miles round trip. The trail starts along different lava flows (a’a and pahoehoe) from the Mount Ulu eruptions that spanned from 1969 through 1974. Mount Ulu, which means growing mountain, is a small shield volcano that is part of the greater Kilauea volcano. Shield volcanoes are gradually built up lava-thick slopes from numerous eruptions. They look like warrior shields, hence their name.

The later part of the trail (including the camping site) runs through the dense forest. As the term rain forest suggests, the place is wet and rain is frequent. I highly recommend bringing along a rain jacket, rain pants, and a rain cover for your tent. Otherwise there is a 99.9% chance you will be miserable.

*If you are planning on camping, it is important to register with the park and get a camping permit.

A view of old lava flows. Pahoehoe flows are in the foreground and a wall of menacing a'a flows line the background.

Thurston Lava Tube

I am standing with my arms fully extended above me to emphasize the height of the Thurston Lava Tube.

The recent activity at the East Rift Zone has been a bit abnormal. When a young lava flow breaks out, it will either die out within a couple days to weeks or it will continue in the same general direction long enough for a lava tube to form. Lava tubes are tunnels of lava built out of a thick lava flow. The upper layer of the lava flow is exposed to the cool air and solidifies. Meanwhile, underneath the solidified ceiling, hot lava continues to flow, well, at least as lava keeps a-coming.

The Kilauea current flow, however, keeps changing directions with breakouts all over the place. As someone at work said, “it is a bit disorganized.” As a result, a thick lava tube has not yet formed.

Lava tubes can grow to be several meters high. A good example of this can be seen at the Thurston Lava Tube within the National Park. This approximately 400 years old lava tube has ceilings up to 9 meters or 30 feet high. The ancient lava tube was discovered in 1913 by Lorrin Thurston, a newspaper publisher. Located across from the start of the Kilauea Iki trail, the lava tube consists of two parts. I visited the tube this weekend as part of my self-tour around the National Park.

The first part of the tube is well lit. The dark cave glows an eerie red as you walk deeper into the tube. This part is generally littered with tourists which generally nixes the whole fear factor.

A view into the lit section of the Thurston Lava Tube.

The second part is dark. Only true explorers like myself venture into this latter tube. The only way to successfully conquer this cave (at least uninjured, since the footing is uneven at places) is with a personal flashlight or the force. I opted for a headlamp. Extending twice as far as the lit cave, I must admit that my nerves wavered at points (especially when my roommate started talking about ghosts). Occasional dripping water and the decreasing height of the dark, rocky ceiling upped the spookiness. To reach the very end, my roommate and I had to crawl on our hands and knees to reach the final wall (see the picture below).

I am crouched down a few meters from the back wall. I made it!

Maybe if the Kilauealava flows get their act together, they will form an epic lava tube like Thurston. But until now, the flows will continue moving in disarray (and thus, keep prompting me to visit the field).

Little Kilauea

A view of Kilauea Iki Crater from the a lookout near the start of the trail. Kilauea's current summit eruption plume can be seen wafting up into the atmosphere in the background.

Separated by a small forest, Kilauea Iki Crater, affectionately nicknamed “Little Kilauea,” sits to the east of Kilauea volcano’s main caldera. Slightly less than one third the size of Kilauea’s main caldera, this currently inactive crater was the sight of sky-scraper high lava fountains and an eye-soar of an eruption in 1959. This was also the destination of my Sunday hike, another hike merely minutes from my house.

At noon, my housemate and I set out under a cloudless blue sky to adventure down the Kilauea Iki trail. A relatively short hike, the 4 mile trail loops along the rim of the caldera, weaves down into the forest, and traverses the bare bottom of the crater before returning up a rather stressfully steep stretch back to the crater rim.

The Historical Eruption:

A blanket of lava sweeps down Kilauea Iki Crater's southern wall. Taken around 2.5 hours after the eruption started, this photo captures the fire-y intensity of the brief but concentrated eruption. Courtesy of USGS.

For three months leading up to the Little Kilauea 1959 eruption, swarms of earthquakes and tremors shook the area. On November 14 at 8:08 pm the eruption began: a fissure of lava broke through the crater’s southern wall. As the fissures extended, cascades of lava poured down the wall, creating a burning, blazing blanket of lava. In addition to the molten falls, the night scene was lit by lava fountains up as high as 30 meters (or 100 feet) into the air.

At the bottom of the crater, lava ponded. Covering and devouring the trees and shrubs that had decorated the crater floor, the lava lake extended 8 meters deep by November 16. At points the flows extended across the vegetated landscape as a molten river (think white water rapids except red and hellishly hot; not something I would personally want to kayak down). Additionally, fountains continued to extend their reach towards the sky with heights up to 80 meters (or roughly 262 feet, almost half the size of the Washington Monument) by November 17.

Around the base of the lava fountaining, a cinder cone grew comprised of the fallen bits of lava spit up by the fountain. This cone was later named Pu’a Pua’i or gushing hill. On November 19 the lava fountain reached it’s maximum height of 350 meters (or 1,148 feet; this is way bigger than the Washington Monument. We are talking almost Empire State Building height!) As the lava fountain height increased, so did the lava lake levels which reached a depth of 98 meters by November 21.

In the initial seven-day eruption, approximately 31 million meters cubed of lava erupted into Kilauea Iki crater. Following this week-long eruption were sixteen episodes between November 26 and December 20, 1959. Days before Christmas, the eruption ended (hopefully giving the hard-worked geologists a well deserved winter vacation).

A view from the path before I set out across the barren crater floor. During the heyday of the eruption, a lava lake around 98 meters in depth covered up this now rocky, dusty floor.

For more information about the actual Kilauea Iki trail, check out this nifty Kilauea trail guide created by the Hawaii National Park. And if my abridged eruption summary got you all fired up and wanting more, you can read the detailed day-by-day eruption description, compliments of the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, here.

One order of fresh lava please

I am giving the thumbs up before attempting to collect a fresh pahoehoe lava sample.

The secret to collecting lava samples is akin to the secret behind dropping diced potatoes into boiling water: get it done as quickly as possible and try not to burn yourself.

Warning! Do not try lava sampling without the proper gear. In the picture above, I am wearing a long fire-resistant shirt and pair of pants, leather gloves, a hat and a balaclava (or face mask).

Using the tail of a hammer, I dug into oozing juvenile lava and scooped a bit up. Fresh lava is very gooey like cake batter and the hammer's edge slides on in. If the lava is older, the top surface has solidified and breaking it requires a strong hit. Next, I immediately dropped the lava into a bucket of cool water (see picture below), causing the water to boil and hiss for a few minutes. This process quenches the sample or captures and freezes the current chemical composition of the lava to prevent contamination. It takes the samples upwards of 5 minutes to cool down to a lower enough temperature that I can hold them with my bare hands. When the samples had cooled, my team moved them into a dry bag that was labeled with the date and location.

Samples of hot lava are flung into a bucket of cold water to quench or preserve their chemical composition at the time.

Another way of sampling lava is by flinging a cable with a sharp edge down into a lava tube. This can only be done if there is a skylight or hole into a lava tube. Lava tubes are long conduits of lava along the Earth's surface where the entire outer layer has solidified over. But within the lava tube, there is a stream of moving, hot fire-y lava. One should not, however, create a hole just for this purpose. This collection method is far more dangerous than the rock hammer way, but yields much purer samples (i.e. the samples better preserve the initial magma source composition.)

Besides being cool and a testament to one’s courage and strength, collecting lava samples is essential for geologists to understand an eruption and its magma source. The chemical composition of lava is similar to its maternal magma, and the minerals and dissolved gases that make up the lava can relay whether the magma originated from a deep or shallow source. Moreover, the chemical composition reveals other properties about the eruption such as eruption temperature.

For more information of Kilauea’s magma source (which is nearly 100 kilometers deep into the mantle) and its chemical composition (magnesium and iron rich), as well as how geologists specifically used lava samples to determine Kilauea’s various magma/source properties, check out this Volcano Watch article at http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/1997/97_03_14.html .

An HVO volunteer (not me) collects a sample of red chili-pepper hot lava.

The joys of living on a National Park

A view of the summit and its powerful plume from the trail. It is hard to tell where the plume ends and the overlying clouds begin.

The volunteer house is only a stone's throw away from a flurry of trails leading around and inside the Kilauea volcano caldera. The summit of Kilauea is located in the northern edge of the park. Constantly emitting a gas plume, the summit can be seen in the photo above. The summit is situated within a much larger depression known as a caldera. Calderas are formed around volcano summits when the erupting magma originates from a shallow underground reservoir. When magma is spewed out, the overlying ground loses it's structural support and may collapse into a caldera. It is thought that Kilauea's current caldera was born out of numerous collapses between 500 to 200 years ago.

I followed a trail along the upper rim of the caldera. Besides witnessing dozens of breathtaking views of the summit, I got a peak into Hawaii's diverse botany and bird wildlife. Lining the trail were young brown furry coiled ferns and older green ferns with large leaves. Sticking out from the green backdrop are red pua lehua flowers or 'ohi'a blossoms. This soft spikey flower is the official flower of the Big Island and can be seen is full bloom all across the park.

Younger coiled ferns in the foreground and larger mature ferns in the back.

Almost the same rouge color as the delicate fibery red pua lehua flowers are the Apapane birds or Honeycreepers who congregate around the red flowering trees. Additionally, I saw a few grey Mourning doves and yellow and grey Hutton's vireos. I still have yet to spot a Nene, the state bird.

Vibrant red pua lehua flowers.

Unfortunately I don't have any bird photos to share. Those coy winged creatures always flew away right as I was about to photograph them. Learning the art of bird photography is next on my list of things to do...

Lava and the sea

Every time I have gone out into the field thus far, something awesome and new has happened. Well, at least awesome and new to me. On Thursday, at 12:15 pm the east rift zone lava flows finally hit the ocean (now over 600 meters from Sunday's flow margins). This is referred to as an "ocean entry" and is a spectacular, but dangerous phenomenon.

When the hot pahoehoe lava meets the sea, a plume of white steam erupts. In the picture above you can barely see the glistening lava behind the thick steam. The steam is comprised of lingering dissolved gas molecules in the lava that flashes to steam upon contact with the cold water, as well as vaporized H2O and a high concentration of vaporized salt from the ocean water.

Be careful not to stray too close to the steam clouds though, because unlike the refreshing feel of a spa steam room, this steam could be speckled with pieces of glass, quickly cooled and solidified lava, ejected from flow. Moreover, if you are close enough to be consumed by the steam plume, it means you are also within spraying distance of very, very hot water. Heated by the hot lava, sea water within a few meters of the flow entry point can have temperatures up to 69 degrees Celsius.

As more and more lava gushes into the ocean a miraculous thing happens: new land is created. But this fledgling island rock is highly unstable. Intermittently large slabs of newly erected land will collapse, or calve, into the ocean. This is yet another in a long laundry list of reasons why you should not get too close to flows entering the ocean. Plus, this huge collapse can send soccer ball size pieces of rock up to 120 meters (or slightly farther than a football field)!

(Both pictures were taken by me, Zahra Hirji, on behalf of USGS.)