Hawaii 2015: Halemaʻumaʻu Crater
Sunday, 14 June 2015 20:16![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iguana
While on Hawaiʻi I was living in a village called Volcano, which was indeed on Kīlauea volcano, about 5km from the nearest active crater. Fortunately the village is broadly uphill and upwind of both!
While the other eruption from Kīlauea, Puʻu ʻŌʻō, is unfortunately largely off-limits, Emily and I would often visit Halemaʻumaʻu Crater, which was always captivating.
The Glow
Halemaʻumaʻu is a crater within a crater, about a kilometre across within the larger Kīlauea summit caldera. The closest you have been able to get to Halemaʻumaʻu is the Jaggar Museum about a kilometre away, from which the vast majority of my photos (and everyone else's!) were taken.
While Halemaʻumaʻu looks fairly benign during the day, at night its plume of sulphurous smoke is lit up by the lava lake below, and if the conditions are right you can see it for miles around.
We visited "the glow", as we dubbed it, pretty regularly since we lived so nearby. It remains one of the sights on Hawaiʻi that you can never get enough of, and is probably the part of the state I will miss the most.
Halemaʻumaʻu is a crater within a crater, about a kilometre across within the larger Kīlauea summit caldera. The closest you have been able to get to Halemaʻumaʻu is the Jaggar Museum about a kilometre away, from which the vast majority of my photos (and everyone else's!) were taken.
While Halemaʻumaʻu looks fairly benign during the day, at night its plume of sulphurous smoke is lit up by the lava lake below, and if the conditions are right you can see it for miles around.
We visited "the glow", as we dubbed it, pretty regularly since we lived so nearby. It remains one of the sights on Hawaiʻi that you can never get enough of, and is probably the part of the state I will miss the most.
Lava Lake
On 25th April Emily and I were packing for a weekend hike to Waimanu Valley, when I happened to check the news and saw the Nepal earthquake in the UK news. I went to Big Island's local news website to see if there would be any risk of tsunamis to us on the coast. There wasn't, but one of the stories there was that the lava lake at Halemaʻumaʻu, which had been far below the surface since the crater opened, was now visible from the Jaggar Museum.
Realising that this was a unique event and that it might only last a few hours, we drove there immediately. The lava lake was indeed visible, and it was beautiful.
We agreed to forfeit the camping trip in favour of staying out to watch the lava lake. During the course of the night we watched it rise slowly further up the vent. The noise of crackling and booming as small rocks fell in and exploded provided the only sound, as we and the dozen or so other onlookers watched on in silence and hushed whispers.
On 25th April Emily and I were packing for a weekend hike to Waimanu Valley, when I happened to check the news and saw the Nepal earthquake in the UK news. I went to Big Island's local news website to see if there would be any risk of tsunamis to us on the coast. There wasn't, but one of the stories there was that the lava lake at Halemaʻumaʻu, which had been far below the surface since the crater opened, was now visible from the Jaggar Museum.
Realising that this was a unique event and that it might only last a few hours, we drove there immediately. The lava lake was indeed visible, and it was beautiful.
We agreed to forfeit the camping trip in favour of staying out to watch the lava lake. During the course of the night we watched it rise slowly further up the vent. The noise of crackling and booming as small rocks fell in and exploded provided the only sound, as we and the dozen or so other onlookers watched on in silence and hushed whispers.
Pele's Hair in our hair
Shortly after 01:00 a large part of the crater edge collapsed into the lake. A plume of ash shot up into the sky. Unusually for Hawaii, the wind was heading towards us, and we all got doused in volcanic debris: ash, and strands of glass known locally as Pele's Hair.
Naturally I was watching the event rather than fiddling with my camera at the time, but I did blindly hit the camera button a couple of times, and managed to get the top part of the explosion in one shot.
And another 6 seconds later, with it blurred but in frame:
As a reminder for a sense of scale, that lava lake is nearly a kilometre across.
We spoke to the wardens about it next evening and they said they'd known that side of the crater was going to collapse, but not when, and none of the staff had been around at that time. My photos are the only ones I've been able to find of the event.
Shortly after 01:00 a large part of the crater edge collapsed into the lake. A plume of ash shot up into the sky. Unusually for Hawaii, the wind was heading towards us, and we all got doused in volcanic debris: ash, and strands of glass known locally as Pele's Hair.
Naturally I was watching the event rather than fiddling with my camera at the time, but I did blindly hit the camera button a couple of times, and managed to get the top part of the explosion in one shot.
And another 6 seconds later, with it blurred but in frame:
As a reminder for a sense of scale, that lava lake is nearly a kilometre across.
We spoke to the wardens about it next evening and they said they'd known that side of the crater was going to collapse, but not when, and none of the staff had been around at that time. My photos are the only ones I've been able to find of the event.
Through a telescope
Word got around about the lava lake and after the first night, the overlook area was busy enough that there was a mile-long queue to get to the overlook car park. On Sunday we decided to go to bed early and visit in the early morning instead.
This turned out to be a good decision. Someone from the Keck Telescope, one of several at the top of Big Island's Mauna Kea, was there, and had a fairly serious looking telescope pointed at the lava lake. Despite being 5am the area was very busy, but the guy was very friendly and soon people had formed a queue to take it in turns to look through the eyepiece.
Some people in front of us were getting some nice photos on their iPhones by having the phone's camera look through the telescope instead of their human eyes. We were disappointed to find out that while phone cameras happen to be very good at looking through telescopes due to their small size, DSLRs are not. However, by chance the astronomer had a Canon adaptor, so I managed to get a great few photos on my own camera!
Word got around about the lava lake and after the first night, the overlook area was busy enough that there was a mile-long queue to get to the overlook car park. On Sunday we decided to go to bed early and visit in the early morning instead.
This turned out to be a good decision. Someone from the Keck Telescope, one of several at the top of Big Island's Mauna Kea, was there, and had a fairly serious looking telescope pointed at the lava lake. Despite being 5am the area was very busy, but the guy was very friendly and soon people had formed a queue to take it in turns to look through the eyepiece.
Some people in front of us were getting some nice photos on their iPhones by having the phone's camera look through the telescope instead of their human eyes. We were disappointed to find out that while phone cameras happen to be very good at looking through telescopes due to their small size, DSLRs are not. However, by chance the astronomer had a Canon adaptor, so I managed to get a great few photos on my own camera!
Good bye, lava lake
We had plane tickets to Maui and Kauaʻi on Wednesday, and when we got back ten days later, Halemaʻumaʻu's lava lake had once again dropped out of sight, though not before overflowing briefly to leave a blackened scar across the bottom of the Kīlauea caldera as a reminder.
Even now I'm back home, I keep the USGS's webcams page open to check in on how the glow looks each night.
We had plane tickets to Maui and Kauaʻi on Wednesday, and when we got back ten days later, Halemaʻumaʻu's lava lake had once again dropped out of sight, though not before overflowing briefly to leave a blackened scar across the bottom of the Kīlauea caldera as a reminder.
Even now I'm back home, I keep the USGS's webcams page open to check in on how the glow looks each night.
