Chrissy's World - Photos 8, Page 7, Crater Rim Trail

Photos 8, page 7

Photos 8 -

Crater Rim Trail & Kilauea Iki

August 6, 2011

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Another beautiful day in paradise, I couldn't stay home. The temperature wasn't more than 70, a pretty brisk wind blowing
in the cleared areas. In the trees, it was quiet. I got a relatively early start (10:00 AM) and headed over to
the Park (white line). I parked at the beginning of Desolation Trail (more on that later). This turned out to be a pretty
good hike. 4.5 miles out (green line), and 6.9 miles back (I was wondering why I was so tired!). A little less than 6 hours. It
was a fairly level hike, except my brief detour through Kilauea Caldera, and the trails were in excellent shape. I didn't
realize what a big loop around Kilauea Iki it was heading back until I mapped it later. I could have gone the other way
around Iki and it would have been a much shorter walk. But then I would end up coming back the same way I left and that's
a no-no whenever possible. (Napau Crater Trail, for example, requires you to come back the same way you came in. Well,
there is a way to hike through (the Kahauale'a Trail) but its over very rough terrain and then you're 20 miles from the car
and it's all uphill on the way back!

10:34 AM @ *978
Starting out. Desolation Trail is so named
annihilated this area of the rain forest. Anything

Before we start, I thought I'd give you a
little homework! There will be a quiz at
the end of the page...!

Here are a couple of excellent
brochures put out by The Park. They
are simple yet surprisingly informative
and I learned a lot about where I'm
hiking (and living) and how it got that
way...

10:37 AM @ *979
That's Mauna Kea over there...
In the foreground, you see the desolation, already coming back to life, from the 1959 eruption of Kilauea Iki. Must have
been a hell of a show...

10:59 AM @ *997
A gate. There are fences like this all
over, trying to keep the feral pigs out.
A big and serious problem...

10:40 AM @ *983
Mauna Loa is so damned big that it took three pictures even though my camera was set to
wide-angle. I wasn't able to stitch them together so I just overlapped them here...
Mauna Kea is in the distance, some 30 miles away, just to right of Mauna Loa.

10:40 AM @ *987
Make note of that hump of cinder. It's
called Pu'u Pua'i (gushing hill).
Kilauea Iki is on the other side and up
in 1959.

10:43 AM @ *987
Mauna Kea again for no particular
reason...
Because it's there...!

10:53 AM @ *992
A peek at Halema'uma'u with Mauna
Loa looming in the background

11:00 AM @ *997
Go left...

11:00 AM @ *997
Looking back

11:32 AM @ *005
Now isn't this just incredibly beautiful?
Coming back up out of Kilauea
Caldera...

12:06 PM @ *012
Looking back across the caldera. See
Pu'u Pua'i? Kilauea Iki is on the left
of it. I came down on the right of that
cleared area, then hiked along the
(Byron) Ledge, down into the caldera
and up again.

12:16 PM @ *021
Mauna Loa again. All the people you
see are coming from the right where
park road. On the left is the Kilauea
Caldera

Another look at the desolation in the
Desolation Trail area. That's
downwind of Kilauea Iki

12:45 PM @ *027
Halema'uma'u Crater
The lava is hundreds of feet down...

12:46 PM
Well isn't this just peachy? A paved
trail. This is the "civilized" part of the
park where most of the people go...

1:02 PM @ Jaggar
You can't see it but there's a 500-foot diameter hole inside that crater you see.
Inside the hole, some hundreds of feet down, is boiling lava...