The popular Kilauea Iki Trail in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park recently fully reopened, a year and a half after Kilauea erupted and more than 60,000 quakes rattled the volcano’s summit. The shaking last year damaged much of the park, including the popular four-mile loop from the rim of a crater to its floor. Now visitors will see something new along the way: large boulders that tumbled down during the seismic shaking.
The trail starts out in lush forest and gives way to the sparse floor of the crater, which in 1959 was a “seething lava lake, with lava fountains up to 1,900 feet high.” Hikers now walk on hardened lava where decades later there’s still a hot rock that steams on the surface.
Work crews from the nonprofit Friends of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and other national park workers helped make repairs. It’s all part of the park’s slow recovery from the eruption that forced the park to close for an unprecedented 134 days in 2018.
Some of the park’s features were forever changed. The bubbling lava lake within Halemaumau Crater near the summit disappeared after lava was sucked underground, and the crater doubled in size. The park’s Jaggar Museum, which contained geologic and cultural artifacts, sits precariously close to the newly formed rim.
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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