Loading ...It looked like a nice day to go up the hill to the volcano summit at 4,000 ft elevation today. The Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has reOpened, although some areas near the crater are still closed. They won’t let you get near where the ground is cracking.
My annual pass has expired, so I used this opportunity to buy the “Senior Lifetime” pass good for any national park. Not that I travel around a lot, but we have two parks on this island and I will never have to pay another fee.
The Volcano House hotel at the visitor center has reOpened, and from the glass lobby windows you can see the ‘new and improved’ Halemaumau crater. Pictures do not do it justice. Especially if one knows what this scene looked like just one year ago, the view is just stunning in reality. Just mind boggling to see how much mass collapsed and how deep into the crater.
The volcano is quiet now… for the first time since 1983. No lava is visible anywhere, and sulfur dioxide emissions are at the lowest level on record. It seems to have reached a stable equilibrium after emptying a lot of the magma chamber below the summit. Now begins the slow, laborious process of refilling the magma from below…. deep in the earth. The upwelling is very slow, and my prediction is that it will take many years to reflate the summit area before lava outflow is seen again. I may not see active lava here again in my lifetime… but we shall see.