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.