Summit Inflation, Explosive Events: It's Been a Good Week

Last Sunday was marked by an unusual peak of inflation at the Halema`uma`u vent that caused the lava lake level to rise to the point where it was spattering out of the little pukas on the vent floor. The vent floor is about 85 meters below the Kilauea caldera floor, and the surface of the lava (the surface where the gas is released) is about 200 meters below that. So, for scale, the glowing red holes that you see in the picture below are each about 10 meters across, or the size of a city bus (according to my poor estimation skills).

Matt P. took Fred and I out to see the lava (not all of the volunteers could go for safety reasons), so I've posted a picture and I also took a pixelated video from my camera. All photos and video are property of USGS. A much better video is Matt P.'s zoom-in video, where you can see the lava spattering up through the holes. I've posted the link to the right of this entry under the Interesting Links section. Pretty cool, right? Apparently the lava lake level in June was about this high, although the hole was much bigger so you could see the lake sloshing around a lot more.

While we were there we heard a rockfall that lasted about 15 seconds (it seems even longer when you're standing right there) and the red glow intensified, but apparently it was still a pretty small rockfall in comparison to other events.

Speaking of other events, there was a hybrid/VLP event on September 17 at 3:13 am, meaning that there was a large collapse onto the lava surface that caused an explosive event. There's a video posted on the HVO website from the high resolution low-light camera in the HVO tower, but I've posted it here for your convenience:



This event was about 1/5 the size of the October 12, 2008 explosive event that happened during the day where you could see lava above the vent floor level.

In my humble opinion, it's been a very exciting week.

Happy No-Work Day!

It's official - I win the prize for most awkward burn line (or most hilarious burn line, if that's your sense of humor). You can't see the other side of my face, but I pretty much have a stripe of red across my eyes and a glasses-line on the other side. I call it the "raccoon" tan. Or maybe, the "reverse masked hero" tan?

In other news, it's my first celebration of Labor Day, and to honor my first day of not-working on a week day in Hawaii, I baked garlic rosemary bread using Katie Bovee's recipe that she got from someone else. I baked this bread for comps talks last spring, and this batch turned out even better. Now, if I could only find people to eat it...

On Saturday in Hilo we ate breakfast at a great waffle place, then walked all around the farmer's market before taking a few people to the airport. While I was shopping in the stores along the bayfront Fred showed me a place to buy a soprano ukulele, so I did! Today I've been researching ukulele chords and popular songs to play. Is it just me, or do most songs sound better when played on a ukulele?

P.S. Have a great time in Germany, Ben! I miss you!

Journey to the Top of the World's Biggest Mountain

And I didn't have to go to the Himalayas to do it.

If you were to include the depth to the sea floor, Mauna Loa is technically the tallest mountain in the world (and has the largest volume by far). The summit is located at 13,679 ft, and in order to climb to Moku`aweoweo (the caldera) and return in one day, we started at ~11,000 ft and hiked 4 miles up to the caldera. Here's the view of Mauna Kea from the start of our hike on Mauna Loa.

In the Hawaiian language, moku`aweoweo roughly translates to "burning red area," or it could be named after a red big-eyed fish. Who knows.

The trail is marked by stone cairns, called ahu, so every so often we'd take a break. That's Fred in the background.

A cool feature near the big cairn!

This was my favorite part of the trail. The goldish-brownish material is mostly basaltic pumice from a lava fountain during the last Mauna Loa eruption in 1984, but there are also some pumice chunks where the gas bubbles were elongated and the colors were metallic blue, teal-ish, red, blue-green, and orange.

Finally, we got to the caldera! I felt pretty tough, especially considering the high altitude. It took us about 4.5 hours to hike to the caldera, but only 2.5 hours to hike down. Thanks, gravity.

We were pretty tired after lunch...

Here's all of us at the caldera! From the left: Erin, me, Katie, and Fred.

Four Outta Five Ain't Bad

Last Friday was the second trip planned by Jane to get compass directions for a series of pictures after the 2006 earthquake. This time we traveled to Kawaihae, a city north of Kona. One of the sites damaged was the Pu`ukohola heiau (temple). Pu`u means hill, and kohola means humpback whale, so the site is right near the coast where humpback whales congregate from November to May. Hopefully I can come back over here before I leave! This is a picture of the main heiau building that was damaged:

After the second site (the Kawaihae pier, where the main security guard thought we were crazy for wanting compass directions for buildings that were damaged and didn't exist anymore), we stopped at a chicken plate lunch stand near the road and then drove to Hawi. Hawi is the northern-most town in Hawaii, I'm pretty sure, and it's also super artsy-fartsy. It's a small town with a lot of art galleries and overpriced unnecessary things. Still, I liked this sign:


We decided to drive to Pu`u Huluhulu, one of Mauna Kea's old eruptive cones that is now surrounded by Mauna Loa lava flows. This is the view from the top looking towards Mauna Kea, with many more Mauna Kea cones all around and the treacherous Saddle Road in the middle:


On the drive up to the Mauna Kea observatory, I got hungry for some delicious chicken...


Here's the visitor's center right before sunset - we hiked up one of the nearby cones to watch the sun go down.


Here's a view of some cones from the top looking toward Mauna Loa. The cones are so pretty, I think.


And here's the sun, and the third youngest volcano Hualalai is in the distance behind the clouds.

So today we saw four out of five volcanoes, including the oldest, Kohala, in the north on the way back from Hawi.

Just for reference, the volcanoes from youngest to oldest are: Kilauea, Mauna Loa, Hualalai, Mauna Kea, and Kohala.

Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na.....Native!

Here's a little tidbit about Hawaii that they don't tell you in the guidebooks. The popular Hawaiian radio station, called Native FM at 95.9, repeats 5 reggae songs over and over in one day.

The most popular song, which you hear approximately 4 times if you're driving a lot in one day, we HVO volunteers call the "Brothers and Sisters" song. The chorus (the only part we can actually understand) goes like this:

Keep your culture/Bruthas and sistas/Keep your culture/...Polynesia!

The other 4 songs that they repeat aren't quite as redundant and there's even one that isn't reggae, but instead it's quite melodramatic and sappy. Someday I'd like to meet the DJ.

Slow Going

Unfortunately, it seems that Pele is feeling shy as the glow from Halema`uma`u is dimming and occasionally "winks" out of sight altogether. This is one of two reasons for my recent lack of posts (or interesting volcano-related ones, at any rate).

The second reason is that I have been updating the huge HVO abstract database for the past few weeks; therefore I have been spending a ridiculous time in front of a computer, typing noisily on a stubborn keyboard for hours at a time. I'm proud to say that I've logged over 100 abstracts and articles, but it does not encourage fun computer blog-updating time at home.

And, here's a random picture for your entertainment. I love the Lava Lounge (and pau hana!) Sam Nakata, a 2008 Carleton geology grad, is behind Katie and I, and Adam Soule, another Carleton grad (from a while ago - he's Sam's advisor at MIT) is there, too. And Katie's laughing REALLY hard about something...probably our Aloha Friday shirts!


This upcoming weekend includes picking up a new volunteer on Thursday, Kawaihae on Friday to do more compass-direction work for Jane, Hilo on Saturday to drop off the Frenchies, and hiking Mauna Loa on Sunday. Then, finally, my very first celebration of Labor Day (aka a day off) on Monday!