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Volcanology

Fri, 12 Jul 2013, 06:41 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

Yes, I’m still still talking about hiking the Napau Trail…

We got to marker #10. Trudy sat down to read from the guide.

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Here, the couple from Arkansas who were ahead of us on the trail turned back when a sign for #16 appeared and confused them.

Now, you must understand who it was that I was hiking with. The fair and industrious Trudy not only was our intrepid tour guide for the day, but she is a geologist who once wanted to be a volcanologist. This is in no small reason why we were vacationing on this particular island in the Pacific. And it was certainly why we were hiking this particular trail that wound thru the pahoehoe desolation. Confusing sign or not, we had no intention of turning back.

At marker #12, Trudy said, “Oh yeah, I wanted to read this story to you.” (Clearly she was surreptitiously skipping ahead in the guide book between the stops.)

So she told the story of Jeffrey Judd who during the Mauna Ulu eruption drove out to the site and hiked onto the active lava channel to collect some samples. She told me how as he was collecting his samples, this 22 year old volcanologist broke thru the surface and sunk up to his knee in hot lava. Out in the burning wilderness alone, clothes on fire, burned, he had to hike out by himself. He survived, but he spent three weeks in the hospital. “Those were the best years of my life,” the guide quoted him as saying today.

There was a fire in Trudy’s eyes. No, we were definitely not turning back.

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