Hawaii - The Big Island

This December, I was one of 9 lucky undergrads chosen to travel to the Big Island of Hawaii through the Dartmouth Earth Sciences department. Before the trip, we met for several night classes to learn about the regional geology, study how hot spots form, and the basics of volcanology.

We spent the first three days on the Kona side (the western side) of the Island, where the weather is consistently high 70s and sunny. Not too shabby.

The first day we went hiking near the northern coast, where the volcanoes are no longer active. The coast is a series of U-shaped valleys, making for some pretty serious hiking. Despite what it looks like in this photo, we had beautiful blue skies each day on the Kona side.

The sunsets over the ocean were one of my favorite parts of the trip. 

The next day we drove to the summit of Mauna Kea (13,803 ft). There are a number of astronomical observatories conveniently located at the top, where they are not subject to clouds. We were looking down on the clouds. It was really cool to see these facilities after learning about the Keck and others in my astronomy class last fall.

On the drive back down, some of us stopped to hike out to a glacial lake on the side of the volcano. It's wild to think about glaciers in Hawaii, but it happened.

Then we drove around the South Point of the Island, stopping to hike out to an amazing green sand beach. I'd never seen anything like it. The green sand is made up of Olivine, the first mineral to crystallize as magma cools. When all the ash and other particles, which are less dense, are washed out to sea, the olivine are left behind. 

We arrived at our new rental houses in the small town of Volcano (on the eastern side) and that night we drove to the visitor center where you can see the glow of an active lava lake. Pretty scary to think about what's going on under the ground where we were standing...

We hiked down through the Kilauea Iki caldera, which was active as recently as the late 1950s.

In some places, the steam vents are still visible. It was a little freaky to think about what was going on under the rocks we stood on.

This 2003 lava flow permanently closed a coastal state-highway road. This is the first time I've touched rocks that were younger than I am. 

We learned a lot about volcanoes and the geology of Hawaii, but we also had a lot of fun. Here's a photo of science in action :)