Our old friend Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has had a tough go of it, and all of us in some way have felt the impact of lava outbreaks and earthquakes around Kilauea. Pele woke up angry and exercised her will back on May 3, the day the park closed down for safety concerns.
It will have been 142 days of closure when the gates finally open Sept. 22, but if you are like those of us who live near Halema’uma’u crater and made a point of spending time there, be advised, it won’t be the same park you visited last spring.
Earthquake damage is extensive on many of the roads and trails, some of which may have been completely destroyed. When you talk to Ben Hayes, the public information officer, he mentions “… multi millions of dollars,” that will be required to put it back together again at the level it might attract the numbers of visitors it has hosted most recently.
In 2017, HVNP was visited by 2,016,000 people, an average of 5,500 a day. The warning is that upon reopening, there’s no way that many can return, at least not until congress allocates appropriate funding and that will require a lengthy, complicated series of forms and procedures that will require months of work; also, Jaggar Museum is no more; and the Kilauea overlook isn’t close to being ready for visitors.
“At this point,” Hayes said the other day, “we’ve lost 150 parking spots, maybe a little more than that, we just can’t accommodate the numbers we did earlier (this year). It’s concerning, because we want to be open, but people need to know there will be restrictions on where you can go, and they need to know they really, really need to stay on designated trails.
“There are many, many more dangerous areas in the Park that can kill you,” he said, “and (those areas are) where we are trying to keep people out.”
But the park will open, and then comes months upon months of papers to file, contacts with FEMA and help through elected officials in congress. The truth is HVNP may never be 100 percent of what it was once was, yet it is so vast and so magical it will still be vacation worthy for mainlanders when it is made safe once again.
News needs to get out that large areas are restricted, much damage has occurred and there are dangerous spots to be avoided. Hayes and his public relations group is about to do the professionally appropriate thing and send out those warnings, so the “reboot” may take a while.
Still, there will come a time when forward momentum will be essential, when a need to broadcast captivating new images and show that the park is alive and well once again will be in order.
Here’s a thought: How about reopening the conversation of the park as a site for a running event on the safest of roads and trails?
Not just a 10k or 5k or a half-marathon, but all of those distances and, for the show stopper, an ultra marathon, involving Chain of Craters Road for some spectacular panorama vistas that could be a catalyst for tourism interest once again.
It would be an immense undertaking, because the former marathon, considered to be among the world’s toughest, was ended in 2009 after concerns about the fragility of the park.
“A lot of ideas are being thrown around,” said Sharon Faff, owner of the Rainforest Runs and the Kona marathon, “and the marathon that was in the park was very popular, but they still shut it down, so there would be a lot of hurdles, to say the least.”
Lance Tominaga of Big Island Road Runners is not an ultra-distance runner, but he thinks the concept would be popular, “If you had a 10k and a 5k to go with it, because you won’t get many people doing an ultra, may be 150 or so. If you open it to relay teams, I think you could really bump up the numbers and relays are becoming more and more popular.
“The other thing is that you would need a very professional support system,” Tominaga said. “The marketing would be key, because you’d be trying to get people from Oahu and the mainland; the course would have to be very carefully drawn, avoiding sensitive areas in the park; you would need a station that cleaned off shoes so that nothing invasive was brought in.
“It would take a lot of work by a lot of people, and it may get shot down, anyway.”
All true and there is a standing rule that no competitive sports events are allowed in national parks, a point Hayes made in his initial response to the general idea. Then, it was pointed out that the park is already different from every other national park in the country because it encompasses a military camp and an active volcano. With the immense amount of unwanted publicity that has come its way, wouldn’t the parks service understand the extremely important need to mount a fundraising campaign to put it back together again?
“It’s a good question,” Hayes said, “and, you know, maybe so, but if we ask we would have to have a lot of details worked out first and I have months of work in front of me before I could even get to looking at it.”
That’s fair and reasonable, and it might be beneficial in some way.
If there’s interest in such a run, the running community here needs to come forward, organize itself and be a part of the change.
“It would be so exciting to see something like that,” said Noe McMahon, a Volcano resident and women’s winner of last month’s RainForest half-marathon. “I would definitely be behind something that could bring back the park to what is was, or maybe even better.
“Before it shut down, I did about 99 percent of my running in the park,” McMahon said. “The routes, the runs are amazing and I was always thinking about how you could make courses as I was running. If people are serious, I would love to be a part of a group that would consider how to plan an ultra or a 10k or whatever.”
As it happens, Chain of Craters Road is still in good shape and the first crazy thought was a 44-mile run from the visitor’s center to the Sea Arch and back up again, but there are many possible intriguing routes.
“Sign me up,” said Billy Barnett, arguably the Big Island’s most accomplished ultra-distance runner, “the idea is amazing and I’d love to be a part of it, even if it’s just running in it. I’d be there.”
There was more discussion of possible ultra-distance runs and the concept of 22 miles downhill on Chain of Craters sounds like a prescription for knee and ankle injuries, but Barnett seized on the idea of an ultra that would start in Kalapana, where the coastal stretch of Chain of Craters Road has been cleared as an escape route from that area should lava cover the main road out.
The emergency route is all gravel, and extends eight miles to the Sea Arch, then goes up the hill for 22 miles to the visitor’s center, making it a 30-mile run, the last 22 miles uphill. The starting area in Kalapana would be a good business jolt for the community. They could have taiko drummers, food and fun scheduled before and during the events, with competitors bused back down from the finish to eliminate overcrowding as much as possible in the park.
Kalapana could be the site for post race awards and merriment.
“I would love that,’ Barnett said, “what a great challenge, what an opportunity that would be.”
Understand, when Barnett invokes love on the potential run, it comes from a guy who finished 17th last November in a 100-mile run in Arizona, where hundreds competed from all over the country. He’s run several 50-milers, dozens of marathons.
It’s our park, all of ours. Let’s see what we can do to bring it back, as good or better than it ever was, with the permission of she who shapes the sacred land, madame Pele.
Comments? Suggestions? Whistleblower tips? Contact Bart at barttribuneherald@gmail.com