Hawaiian Island Cruise

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Tuesday, 3 January 2023 - Anchored off Hilo on the Big Island and spent the day at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park exploring the Sulphur Banks with steam and volcanic gases rising, walked boardwalks around steam vents and sulphur deposits, saw the Kilauea summit caldera and pit crater with steam and smoke, and photographed volcanic landscapes and features throughout the park.

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This is the volcano Mauna Kea with snow and observatories on top as the sun rises. It is almost 14,000 feet tall, making it the highest point in all of Hawaii. As all the islands of Hawaii are volcanos rising from the seabed if you measure height from the "ground" (in this case the seabed) then Mauna Kea is the biggest mountain in the world at 30,615 feet which is over 1,000 feet higher than Mount Everest!!!
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Today we would spend the day in Volcanoes National Park.

Our first stop was at the Sulphur Banks where volcanic gases and steam rise up from underground.
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The yellow/green sulphur is deposited on the ground as the fumes make there way from deep underground.
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As we walked on the boardwalk there were steam and sulphur vents all around us.
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Kilauea has a large summit caldera, measuring 2.5 by 2.0 miles, with walls up to 400 feet high, breached by lava flows on the southwestern side. Following the pattern of Hawaiian volcano formation, Kilauea started as a sea volcano, gradually building itself up through underwater eruptions of alkali basalt lava before emerging from the sea with a series of explosive eruptions about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Since then, the volcano's activity has likely been as it is now, a continual stream of effusive and explosive eruptions of roughly the same pattern as its activity in the last 200 or 300 years.
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A major feature within the caldera is Halemaumau, a large pit crater and one of Kilauea's most historically active eruption centers.
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Cal shooting into the caldera. Looking for lava - fruitlessly....
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All along the bottom of the crater are fissures with steam dotting the landscape.
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Giant canyons and orange deposits covered the bottom of the crater.
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Mary Holman, Virginia Ann, Liz Brooks, and Melissa Radke at Kilauea volcano.
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Down at the bottom of the large pit crater lots of steam and smoke - the volcano went dormant after two years in early December 2022 then went active again 2 days after this picture - so frustrated we came so close to seeing lava!!!!
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Detail of the crater wall and the smoke.
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Steam or smoke along a fissure.
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Our last stop in Volcano National Park was at steam vents near the road on the edge of the volcano.
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