Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1960 Mar
Contents
KODACHROMEBY WENKAM ) NATIONALGEOGRAPHICSOCIETY Stripped and blasted by semimolten pum ice, the limb of an ohia tree reveals devas tation half a mile from the vent. Fiery hail flayed the bark and incinerated the side facing the eruption, leaving the lee section intact. "It was as if some gigantic hand had taken sandpaper and a blowtorch to the forest," said the photographer. to a curtain of gold, showering particles from nearly 1,000 feet above the crater's rim. As we approached, the road signs beside us shook from the force of winds caused by the eruption, and the rumble and roar were deafening. I wanted to retrace the trail I had walked with Eaton and Richter earlier in the week. We were scarcely on our way when we met Richter, with a party coming up behind him. "We're going down to see where you and I went with Eaton last Monday," I explained. "Last Monday! Why, that's under 300 feet of lava now!" was the answer. "And be careful down there. The fumes are bad, and there are fires all over the place." We went ahead, I somewhat bemused, re calling where I had sat that afternoon and watched the two men set out across the pond. I thought: That beautiful spot will never feel air or the sun or be seen by man again. We pushed on, but soon the fumes from the pit did become oppressive. And the smell of smoke from smoldering vegetation hung over everything. On the surface of the lake, fumes 326 rose from a hundred crevasses. There was still green where we stood, but the wall across from the cone had burned a solid gray. I made this note: "Side where sun strikes is dry, burns first, but shaded side is wet, so fire resistant." Just then I heard a crackling. Fire was breaking out above us in something that was far from fire resistant. We raced to get up the trail before it cut us off. That night the volcano lost its vigor. First its golden light turned a dirty blood red. Five minutes later it began to sag and lose its height, and in 40 seconds it was out. The crater, now half filled with lava, appeared left for the scientists and the birds again. But a week later, as I was putting these observations together-thinking I had seen the end of the story-I got a phone call: "Kilauea Iki has erupted again!" So I hurried back. When I got there, I thought at first that I had wasted a trip, for the fountain had already fallen back again. But fire still reddened her throat (somehow I think of her as feminine-perhaps because her beauty disguised her danger), and, though I had no way of knowing it, she was about to put on the most fantastic show yet. Since I was there, I decided I would in spect the aftermath. The crater floor was now so cracked that by day it seemed to hold a hundred burning campfires. At night the red of a thousand rivulets showed through. Cinder Plows Clear the Road I visited the familiar trail again, taking along my family. All was quiet this time. The fires had died down, and the puffs of vapor had thinned to the vanishing point. The lava, now heav ily encrusted, had sagged in spots as much as 25 feet because of shrinkage and the back flow into the vent. Near the banks, strange "vegetation" rose where lava had encased trees and then dropped back. Bulldozers had cleared the road of cinder, pushing it aside like snow. We saw families shoveling it into sacks to use for mulch in Hilo gardens. Tourists strained it through their hands, looking for the black, shiny beads known as Pele's tears, and semiprecious brown-green stones called olivines. At the cone we watched steam emerge from the 200-foot mass. I found it incredible that this shape, nearly half as tall as the Washing ton Monument and heaped with the symmetry
Links
Archive
1960 Apr
1960 Feb
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page