Christmas shopping on a volcano

Most people go Christmas shopping at the local mall but late this afternoon I went to an active volcano instead. My family in Europe love the videos produced by the Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park and so I drove up there late this afternoon to buy the latest DVD about the current activity. I'm sure I could have done this online but doing it this way was more fun.

Above is a panorama taken from the Kilauea overlook and I finally think I managed to get a decent panorama stitched together, even without using a tripod! To be honest, it was so windy I don't think a tripod would have helped, but at least the strong wind kept the plume from blowing over us with its rather poisonous sulphur dioxide (SO2).

I even took a video of the plume yet despite its short length, only 12 seconds, it's 35-megabytes and a bit beyond my dial-up capabilities, so perhaps later...

In lieu of the movie, a close up of the vent and plume:

On the way back to the car park, er, parking lot, the view of Mauna Loa was relatively good although it's a long way away.

After buying the DVDs my plan was, in the limited amount of daylight left, to drive down the Chain of Craters road to a point where I could take a picture of the lava entering the ocean. Unfortunately, the entry zone is a long way from the end of the road and a long hike is necessary at the moment (it changes from month to month, year to year) so I thought I'd at least get a shot from a point where the road starts to drop down the pali (Hawaiian for "cliff") and you get a decent look over the whole coastline. My optimism waned (as did my opinion of American spelling!) when I saw this...

...and the vog from the ongoing eruption at the Pu`u `O`o crater (Kilauea is currently active in two places). The view was going to be obscured and when I arrived it was confirmed; too much cloud and vog. On the other hand, while trying to get a decent photo of the lava entry from miles away, I turned around and took this instead:

Interesting colours to say the least, helped by some dust on the camera lense. The sun was starting to set behind some high cloud to the west and the thick vog was to the east. The coastline was dead ahead, about 1500 to 2000 feet below. I was starting to feel unwell...

I've lost count of the number of times I've visited the volcano and have never felt the effects of the SO2 and all the other nasty stuff in the volcanic plumes, but at this point I was getting a headache and my eyes felt as though I'd been rubbing them with sandpaper. Maybe I shouldn't have ignored all the warnings after all. So I headed back and I'm glad I did, because I saw a few sights I've not seen before.

You need to click on the image above, but it shows the volcanic plume from Kilauea being blown and twisted down the pali at sunset. The wind was so strong at this point that I gave up leaving the car and took the picture through the windscreen (USA translation: windshield). The vog was bad enough, but I also have very wiry and curly hair which I've not had cut for a couple of months now, and the wind was so strong I had a bit of an Albert Einstein look going on...

At this point I was lucky enough to witness the setting sun appear in a small gap in the clouds and Kilauea's plume. I love this shot (again through the windscreen):

Enough was enough. I really wasn't feeling well so decided to leave and not take any more photos, but I did try one more. There is a road that goes around Kilauea's crater but it's been closed for months now and this is one end of it. The blurring is not deliberate, it was completely accidental but I like the result, it looks quite interesting! It also looks a bit like the way I felt at this stage, so it really was time to go home.

There was, however, a quick stop to look back at the red sky on the way back to sea level. I saw this in my rear view mirror and just had to stop.