Photos 6, page 1
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Lava Hike
| September 12, 2009 |
| Emboldened by my hike to Royal Gardens on 9/5, I decided to take a quick hike out the now lava-covered road to where I used to park to do my lava hikes before they closed the road on 3/4/08. |
| In this view, I'm showing my hike today (green out, magenta back), my hike of 9/5 (faded blue out, faded orange back), and my hike of 2/28/08 (blue out, faded pink back). |
| Here I show my route out and back. The Google Earth image is somewhat older (you can actually see the parking area) than when I took today's hike so I added the overlay that shows the most recent extent of the lava flows (pink area). The yellow line indicates where the lava tube is supposed to be. A lava tube is a river of lava that has crusted over so that the lava stays hot and flows underground. Sometimes these lava tubes collapse... |
| This is the "booth" at the head of the trail down to the viewing area. Notice the hand-lettered "ALOHA" sign that basically says you can't see anything! I'll be going down the road to the right of the container of the left-most photo. |
| Views of EOR (End Of Road) See 3/20 and 3/21/08 for day and night views of this flow as it happened |
| Up on the lava, looking back |
| 11:33 @ 004 (ridge) that slopes up to Royal Gardens is on the right. Royal Gardens is off the right edge of the picture. |
| 11:48 @ "1st Hse" Here's a view in other direction, looking up at Royal Gardens |
| 11:36 @ 006 Royal Gardens |
| There's that house I saw on 9/5. I was going to walk out to it but the heat waves discouraged me. My feet also started to get hot ("Heat") and I knew I was near the lava tube. It thought it best to turn back... |
| 11:58 @ 010 Almost high noon. It's hot out here! I decided to head toward those two palm trees and find some shade. It turned out that the brush was essentially impenetrable so I finally just flopped down in the bushes at "Rest". After I cooled down, I followed the edge of the lava flow back to the road. |
| <-- Looking back at the gate My car parked in the shade in the woods... --> A short hike but at mid-day, really hot! 3.3 miles, 2.5 hours |
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