Hawaii - Pele's Blood

Pele’s Blood


I arrived at Volcano National Park late in the afternoon, and went straight to the Visitor Center. There I consulted a tired looking ranger about the status of the volcano. “I understand there is no flow right now, is that correct?”
“We just heard from the rangers on the coast, that volcanic activity is visible.”
I grinned with delight. “Oh, really? Cool! Thank you, Pele! So I can drive down and see it now? How far is the coast?”
She smiled at my obvious pleasure. “It’s a half hour drive, just follow the road south.”
“Thank you!” I turned to go, then turned back to say, “You look like you need to go to bed!”
She nodded and sighed. “All my allergies are playing up because of the sulfur and other chemicals in the air. I get off work soon, and then I am going to bed.”
I followed the winding road that took me down to sea level. A big lava flow in 1982 covered several miles of the road, so that it’s no longer possible to drive far along the coastline. At the point where the road disappeared abruptly under a thick layer of lava, I found a temporary ranger station. About twenty cars were parked there, full of people who had come down to see the glow of the red lava in the dark. The rangers had telescopes sighted onto the flow, which was probably about a mile away as the crow flies, over piles of cold black rock that extended a long way up the hill. The active flow seemed small -- just a couple of patches and one streak of red. Although dusk was falling, there was still enough daylight that it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. A couple of people were walking out on the cold lava in the direction of the red flow, and I decided to follow them to see if I could get a better view.
There are two quite different kinds of lava in Hawaii. Pahoehoe, which flowed at a higher temperature, is reasonably solid and smooth to walk on, though you certainly have to be careful; a’a’ is piles of loose chunks with very jagged edges, and you never want to try walking on it unless you really have to, because it slides away under your feet. Here, it was pahoehoe, and obviously many people had walked this way already. There were even some red flags, marking a sort of a path.
When I had walked for fifteen minutes or so, carefully negotiating the raw rocks, the red flags were history. I stopped and sat on a flat piece of lava to watch with my binoculars. Then I could see that the flow was changing all the time -- of course, it's flowing! It still looked small; clearly my chances of getting close to it that night were nil. I was about to go back when a couple with a kid came walking by.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes, it certainly is! I’m so glad the flow started up so we could see it.” The guy had a reverential tone to his voice.
”Yes, we were lucky. Are you going further?” I asked.
“Well, it’s pretty tricky going but I think we’ll try to get closer,” the woman replied with a friendly smile.
“I don’t have a flashlight so I think I’d better get back before I can’t see anything underfoot.”
“Oh, we have a couple of flashlights, come with us!”
That’s exactly what you were meant to say. “Thanks, that would be great!”
The four of us walked a considerable way further, until it was quite dark, and we could see a number of glowing streaks ahead of us. The source of the flow still seemed a long way off but the going was getting really hard, so we agreed it was time to turn back. By that time I knew my companions as Peter, Maria, and Robert from Philadelphia. Peter took a bunch of photos, lying down on the lava, and promised to email them to me. A big red glow was visible over the mountains to the left of the flow. That was apparently the source of the vent that was producing the lava we were seeing, which meant that it had flowed underground a long way before it surfaced where we could see it.
“Damn, this is so incredible to see molten lava like this, I wish we could get closer,” said Peter regretfully, as he stood up and put his camera away.
“I think I’ll walk out tomorrow in daylight,” I said.
“I wish I could do that but we’ve got a flight back to Honolulu.” He sounded distinctly bummed. “You’ll have to buy a camera and send us pictures!”
I could sympathize with his frustration – this was certainly one of the most incredible sights I had ever seen.
When we turned around, the lights of the ranger station showed us what direction to take. We saw a couple of flashlights behind us – people who had obviously been much closer to the flow. I was glad we hadn’t gone further - once it got properly dark, you really had to concentrate where you put your feet. The mounds of lava are so irregular, so unpredictably piled and so varied in height -- gently sloping, or stark and sheer up to twelve feet high, or more, off the average floor, which is very far from level anyway -- and there is often a thin layer of loose shale that flakes off when you step on it, so you can easily slip. Edges of big flat plates are often sticking up, where they have been pushed by a second (or third or fourth or fifth or sixth) flow of lava that came from underneath. The lava sometimes contains air bubbles, which may give way under your weight. Usually such air pockets are only a couple of inches but they can be as much as several feet deep. Most treacherous of all are the many fissures, some only an inch or two wide, others gaping open a couple of feet wide, and several feet deep.
In spite of all this, we reached the ranger station safely, except that I was wearing my sandals, so I scraped up my toes on a sharp edge here and there. I hate wearing enclosed shoes in hot weather, but this looked like a situation where it was necessary
I said goodbye to the Philadelphians, and drove back up the hill to the only campsite in the park, way along a remote road. A soft rain fell throughout the night, and the morning was foggy. I put on my good shoes, long pants, and a sweatshirt, and drove down to sea level, stopping once to walk to edge of the ocean. The lava has formed a steep cliff, twenty or more feet high all along that stretch of coast. I’d read that two tourists were killed when the cliff they were standing on collapsed into the water. Another potential danger is sudden eruptions of lava into the ocean below the surface, causing spouts of very hot water and lava to shoot up in the air. A person wouldn’t want to be in the way. Nevertheless, it was very beautiful, watching the water throwing up clouds of brilliantly white yet ethereal spray, as waves hit the cliff.
It wasn't raining at the coast, but plenty of wind and cloud made it pleasantly cool. Since I couldn't see last night's flow, I just set off in the general direction. No one was around, although several helicopters and planes flew overhead as I was hiking. You can take helicopter trips to see the lava lake which is the vent – the source of the red glow I’d seen the night before - but if the cloud is thick you don’t see anything at all. A rich person's gamble.
The lava became more irregular and more treacherous the further I walked. I had to traverse some areas of a'a', walking on lumps of cinder as big as your fist, piled many feet deep, crumbling and shifting under me. I really didn’t relish the idea of falling, since if I caught myself with my hands, my skin would get very scraped up. I managed to stay upright most of the time, although there was one spot where I crawled on all fours. In a few places the lava surface gave way an inch or two as I put my weight on it, and I encountered one area, about twenty feet across and twenty feet deep, which had collapsed in on itself. Assuring myself I was very light, I tried to stick to areas where ferns were beginning to poke their green tips through, figuring they were older flows that might have stabilized. I headed for a swathe of trees where the lava had parted, at the peak of the long slope that led down to the ocean. Once I got to the top of the hill, maybe I would see the vent itself, from which the flow originated.
Three hours and a lot of sweat later, I had to acknowledge that the vent was a long way off. The sea of cold lava stretched endlessly away in the distance, punctuated only by a few groups of sad looking trees. I passed a place where a tree trunk lay along the rock, burnt off at one end, and then I found the tubular hole where it had once stood, about fifteen feet deep.
I decided to give up on the vent, and make my way back to the ranger station. There are no landmarks on the lava, of course, and I was very grateful to be able to see the coast so I could get my bearings. Then, as I retraced my steps, I spied a place below me where steam poured out of the rock, sweeping away in the wind. Hmm, that has potential! I headed towards it. Here were many signs of recent flows, where new lava had surfaced, forming long fingers like lengthening turds, varying in width from two feet to an inch, ending in tight whorls as the flow slowed and cooled, like glue. In places, these whorls were like thick strands of rope; sometimes they were heaped on top of each other, sometimes they were tall, like piles of cloth that should be hanging down but were sticking up instead. In other spots, I could see where the hot lava had thrust its way through the cold lava, pushing it apart, then filling up cracks and holes in the previous flow.
As it ages, the lava seems to settle into a dull blackish color, but when it’s new, the colors are incredible: the edges of the new flows are often iridescent blue, with hints of rainbows. The ends of the smaller fingers are quite weak, pocked with air, easily broken off, and quite stunningly iridescent inside. The surface of the smoother parts is often marked with a kind of white-ish discharge, shaped like the segments on the back of a turtle.
I kept feeling the rock as I was walking to see if any of it was hot, but it all just seemed a little warm from the nonexistent sun. Then I noticed a small red patch a couple of hundred yards to my left: was this really the active flow? I pulled out my binoculars to check it out, but it looked just as though someone had made a red mark on the rock. Then suddenly I realized there were other glowing cracks developing around it. This really was it!
I made my way as close as I dared, about a hundred feet away, and settled down with the binoculars. My elation was mixed with some severe anxiety, but I reassured myself: none of it is moving faster than I can run. Now I could hear the rocks quietly crackling, and I could smell the heat. After a particularly loud crack, I got a great view of red lava pouring from a gaping red hole, streaming down between the existing black rocks. As it started to cool, a grayish crust formed on top, though it stayed red round the outer edges for several yards, then began to slow and pile up in great bulging ribbons, like candle wax, or piles of thick carpet. A single bright red drop, moving faster than the lava underneath, made its way a few feet over the top from the point where the flow began. More red cracks revealed themselves, and grew, in spots up and down in front of me, dying back, and then reviving further down.
This is so incredible, to see molten rock flowing, I am so lucky, thank you, Pele, thank you so much! Satisfied at last, I set off downhill to safety. Then I realized that I was walking right into more hot stuff - I could feel the heat radiating upwards, steam started pouring out in a couple of places in front of me, and a few glowing red spots appeared within fifty feet. Was the ground going to collapse and plunge me into a red-hot crevasse? I increased my speed and took off in a different direction, although that meant I was moving across a'a'. Looking back, I could see the air shimmering with heat in a swathe at least a hundred feet wide, and I could still feel it swirling around me in the wind.
Then I noticed a couple of people -- the first I had seen that day -- carrying tall walking sticks, moving up towards the heat. Thinking I should warn them, I shouted and waved. But they couldn’t hear what I was saying, and walked right over the flow between us to get to me, which wasn’t my intention at all. When they were close enough to hear me, I said, “I was just trying to warn you that the flow is right where you just walked!”
The guy grinned broadly and said, “Oh, we walked right into it way back there!” He waved his stick at the flow. “It’s incredible, these red gaps opening up everywhere, all over the place, all around us!”
He was like an excited schoolboy, barely able to string his sentences together. The woman made more sense, when he wasn’t interrupting her.
“We’d been walking a while,” she said, “and we were about to give up when we saw something red.”
“We thought at first that it was man-made paint of some kind!” he interjected gleefully.
“Yes, that’s what I thought when I first saw the rock glowing,” I said, amused that we’d all had the same initial reaction.
“Well, then we realized it was red-hot rock.”
“It was a skylight, just right there in front of us!”
He used the term ‘skylight’ several times and I gathered it must be a term for an upwelling of lava before it bursts.
The woman continued. “We actually got about twenty feet from it, and walked past it to see if there was any more, when it suddenly bubbled up and burst open, releasing three lava flows. We started taking photos and got quite blasé.”
“One of the flows was only six feet away, and I reached across with my walking stick and poked the end into the red hot rock.”
“Well, what happened when you did that?” I asked. The woman answered my question while he carried on ranting about skylights.
“It formed a little depression that flamed up slightly when he took his stick out, and then it closed over slowly, like molten wax.”
So much for me warning them not to get near the flow! I would have been terrified to be that close, but it was great to talk to someone else who had taken the risk. We walked back to the ranger station, where various tourists, less foolhardy than us, gathered to hear our stories.
“Is it safe to be that close to the lava?” asked one woman doubtfully after we had boasted of our adventures.
“I don’t know, you better ask him,” I laughed, pointing at a ranger standing nearby.
He smiled, and shrugged. “Well, we don’t encourage it. Who knows how thick the crust is? You can never tell when you might fall through. But lots of people go out there, and most of them come back! This volcano is known as the most user-friendly in the world, because it flows so slowly.”
Back at my car, I sank thankfully into the driver’s seat. My little legs felt very weak after that long trek on such rough terrain. I would take it easy for the rest of the afternoon. I was very pleased with the success of my day’s mission: seeing Pele in action, and returning unscarred. In spite of the risk, I knew I would do it again in a hot second – that flowing lava was too hard to imagine, it had to be seen.