We Found It

We are really proud of Christoph who passed his last check flight before Christmas and is now finished with his helicopter training. Christoph took me on a flight Thanksgiving weekend where he practiced airport approaches using instrumentation only. While Christoph was navigating the skies 2,000 feet above Kona, I noticed a skylight to a cave in the lava field below so I snapped a picture. Chris matched the photo with the satellite image of the lava field on Google Earth to obtain the skylight's coordinates. We programmed the point into our GPS unit and took the trek to find the cave on Christmas morning.

We've been exploring lava tubes for about four years and this one is just what we've been looking for. Our goal has been to find a stand-up cave (no crawling) near town so we can conveniently take friends to enjoy the cave, too. On Christmas morning we hiked up the cave for 800 feet when the tube intersected with another cave, which we hiked down for about the same distance. By then, we were late for Christmas dinner. We haven't finished exploring up or down in either cave and we feel there is potential for the cave to go a long ways. We're impressed by the volume of the flow and the height of the cave. It's the winner we've been waiting for!


Light streams through a small skylight in the cave we found on Christmas day.


I'll throw in this photo of Hualalai just because it's pretty. This is the volcano that made the lava flow that formed the cave we're exploring.

Christoph navigates over Kona International Airport.