Sorry, yet another about our hike along the Napau Trail. This should do it, though…
Along the way there were deep fissures and gashes green with leafy things clinging precariously to the edge of yawning chasms that disappeared into blackness.
There was evidence of trunks burned to vapors by the lava: round gaps where trees once stood.
There were piles of jagged a‘a pushed into great heaps and left in place when the Mauna Ulu eruption stopped its five year advance in 1974.
We saw these things as we walked along the trail following the markers and cairns that showed the way,
and we came at last to the foot of Pu‘u Huluhulu where the path disappeared into a shaggy woods and wound up the hill.
And we came at last to the top,
which is what we had come for,
so that we could stand on the summit of that old cinder cone and view the magnificent desolation around us.
Here at marker #14 Trudy told another story.
She told of a pair of geologists who were monitoring the eruptions from the observation station on the top of Pu‘u Huluhulu, using the CCC-built rock walls as a shield against the heat. She told of how the two of them had to run for their lives as great fountains of red-hot lava started shooting out of the ground raining hot cinders and molten rock down on them. She told about how they didn’t bother following the winding trail that we had just climbed but rather how they raced straight down the hill, scrambling thru the thicket with impending death falling on their hard hats.
“Can you imagine!?” Trudy said, mouth agape.
After a few moments, we turned and followed the winding trail back to the bottom. As we went, we gazed into the undergrowth trying to imagine the flight of those two men, wondering how they were able to get thru the undergrowth, how they were lucky to make out alive.