The Big Island has a park where two volcanoes are still active and the lava lake is very real

Hawaii’s most volatile national park won’t sit still

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park doesn’t look like any park you’ve been to before. The ground here is still moving, still building, still burning in places.

Lava fountains have shot nearly 1,800 feet into the air just months ago.

You can walk through a cave carved by flowing lava, cross a crater floor where steam still rises from the cracks, and find more than 23,000 ancient carvings pressed into the rock.

Start planning now, because what the volcano does next is anyone’s guess.

From sea level to 13,679 feet in one park

The park covers more than 335,000 acres on the southeastern shore of the Big Island, and the landscape shifts so fast it can feel disorienting.

You can drive from lush tropical rainforest through open lava desert and keep going until alpine tundra takes over, all without leaving park boundaries.

The elevation swings from sea level to the 13,679-foot summit of Mauna Loa, Earth’s largest active volcano by mass and volume. Two of the world’s most active volcanoes sit inside these borders.

UNESCO recognized what that means in 1987.

Pele’s home and a park older than the state itself

Halema’uma’u crater at Kilauea’s summit has been sacred ground for generations.

Native Hawaiians came here to leave offerings for Pele, their goddess of fire and volcanoes, and the crater still carries that weight. The park was established in 1916, more than 40 years before Hawaii became a state.

It later became an International Biosphere Reserve in 1980.

Along the coast, ancient villages, temples and petroglyph fields have survived beneath the rock, protected within the same boundaries that guard the volcanoes above.

Lava fountains shooting up 1,770 feet since late 2024

Kilauea started erupting again on Dec. 23, 2024, and as of early 2026 it has gone through more than 43 fountaining episodes.

The lava shoots from two vents inside Halema’uma’u crater, and the tallest fountains have reached 1,770 feet.

Each burst typically runs under 12 hours, then the volcano goes quiet for one to three weeks before going again. You can watch it from public overlooks inside the park when it’s active.

Before you book flights, sign up for free USGS Volcano Notification Service emails so you know what’s happening when you land.

Drive the rim and watch the ground steam around you

Crater Rim Drive loops around the summit of Kilauea, and nearly every pullout gives you something worth stopping for.

The Steam Vents are one of the first stops, where rainwater filters down to hot rock and pushes back up as white steam.

A few minutes down the road, the Sulphur Banks turn the rocks yellow and orange from volcanic gases, and a boardwalk runs right through the fumaroles so you can get close.

The Kilauea Overlook opens up the full caldera, wide and raw. The whole loop takes about two hours with stops, and most pullouts are wheelchair accessible.

Drop into a crater and cross a mile of hardened lava

The Kilauea Iki Trail runs about 3.3 miles in a loop, and it earns its reputation.

You start in native forest thick with tree ferns and ohia lehua trees, then the trail drops 400 feet to the crater floor. In 1959, lava fountains here hit 1,900 feet, the highest recorded anywhere in the 20th century.

The floor looks solid, but steam still rises from cracks where rainwater meets the heat below. Rock cairns mark the path across the mile-wide basin.

Plan on two to three hours for the full loop, and bring water.

Walk through a 500-year-old cave the lava left behind

Nahuku, also called Thurston Lava Tube, formed about 500 years ago when lava flowed through and then drained away, leaving a 600-foot hollow tunnel in its place.

You walk through it now under electric lights, which run from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The name Nahuku means “the protuberances,” a reference to lava drippings that once hung from the ceiling before collectors took them.

The whole loop trail covers about 0.4 miles through rainforest that native birds still work through overhead.

Lorrin Thurston, the newspaper publisher who discovered the tube in 1913, also pushed hard for the park’s creation.

18 miles of craters, lava flows and no gas stations

Chain of Craters Road drops 3,700 feet over 18.8 miles from Kilauea’s summit to the Pacific Ocean.

Craters line the route and lava flows from eruptions between 1986 and 2003 buried the pavement where the road ends, hard against the sea. Overlooks along the way show where the hardened lava meets the coastline.

There’s no food, no water and no gas along this road, so fill up and pack what you need before you leave the main entrance area. The drive down and back takes most of a morning.

23,000 carvings pressed into lava at Pu’u Loa

Pu’u Loa sits along Chain of Craters Road and holds the largest petroglyph field in all of Hawaii. More than 23,000 carvings cut into hardened lava cover the area, made by Hawaiian families over generations.

The name means “long hill” but also carries the sense of “long life,” and for good reason: parents brought their newborns’ umbilical cords here and placed them in small carved holes, with prayers for the child’s health and long life.

A raised boardwalk keeps you above the carvings. The trail is a flat 1.4-mile round trip across open lava with no shade, so go early.

A sea arch carved by waves at the road’s dead end

At the end of Chain of Craters Road, the Holei Sea Arch rises where the Pacific has cut through lava rock cliffs over time. A short walk from the parking area puts it in front of you.

Beyond the road’s end, you can walk out onto the hardened lava flows that buried the original pavement, standing on ground that was liquid rock within living memory.

The wind comes in off the ocean with nothing to stop it, and the cliff edges along this stretch are unstable, so stay back from the rim.

Pele’s Hair and a trail through a landscape buried in ash

Devastation Trail is a paved, 0.5-mile walk through a field that the 1959 Kilauea Iki eruption buried under cinder and ash. Scattered ohia trees have pushed back through the gray ground since then, slow and stubborn.

Along the trail you might find Pele’s Tears, small glassy drops of volcanic material, and Pele’s Hair, the thin golden strands of volcanic glass that form when lava sprays into the air.

The nene, Hawaii’s endangered state bird, turns up here often.

The trail is wheelchair and stroller accessible and connects to the Kilauea Iki trailhead parking area.

47 endangered species living inside the park’s boundaries

The park shelters seven threatened and 47 endangered species, many of them found nowhere else on Earth. The nene, a relative of the Canada goose, grazes near parking lots and trailheads across the park.

Cars kill more nene than any other cause, so slow down and never feed them.

In forested sections of the park, you might hear the ‘apapane, ‘amakihi and ‘oma’o before you spot them.

The Kipukapuaulu Trail, a 1.2-mile loop, cuts through one of the park’s most diverse native forests and gives birdwatchers the best shot at seeing several species in one walk. Hawksbill sea turtles nest along the coastline.

The other side of the park almost nobody visits

The Kahuku Unit adds 116,000 acres to the park’s southern end, about an hour from the main entrance on the slopes of Mauna Loa.

It was one of Hawaii’s largest cattle ranches before the park absorbed it in 2003, and the open ranchland is still part of the scenery.

You can hike to the top of a cinder cone, walk through native rainforest or bike through the old ranch terrain. Kahuku draws a fraction of the crowds the summit area gets.

It’s open Thursday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and rangers offer free guided hikes on a regular schedule.

Visiting Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island

The park sits about 30 miles southwest of Hilo and roughly 96 miles southeast of Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. It’s open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The Kilauea Visitor Center is under renovation and expected to reopen in late 2026; the Welcome Center is currently open daily starting at 9 a.m. The park has more than 150 miles of trails covering all ability levels.

Check the official NPS website and USGS eruption updates before you go, since volcanic activity and weather can close areas without warning.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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