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.