A man building foundations on his 300-acre (121-hectare) plot of land on Hawaii’s Big Island, had his plans changed by a very unexpected discovery: an underground entrance to the world’s longest lava tube at the site of the building.
Harry Shick, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has now been a tour guide for almost 30 years. He relocated to Hawaii for college in 1984 and moved to the Big Island and bought a piece of land in 1991.
“Many years later, we find out, when we’re ready to start foundations for the house, that we have access to the lava tube,” Mr. Shick, 59, told The Epoch Times. “There’s an upper passage that comes to my lot, but [the tube] runs parallel to the surface. I have one of about 100 entrances.”
Mr. Shick’s plot lays above Kazumura Cave, the world’s longest and deepest lava tube, located on the eastern slope of Kīlauea, the most recently active volcano on the Big Island. Kazumura Cave is thought to have been formed by lava flow from a volcanic eruption around 500 years ago, and runs 45 to 50 feet (13.7 to 15.2 meters) below the surface of the earth, is over 40 miles (64 kilometers) long, and 3,614 feet (1,101.5 meters) deep.
One of the earliest records of the cave dates from 1966 when one of its entrances was earmarked as a fallout shelter.
In 1995, it was a surveyor who first learned that an entrance to the cave lay beneath Mr. Shick’s property and told him in the nick of time.
“There was no house yet ... he was trying to get in touch with us to let us know what we were about to build on top of,” Mr. Shick said. “He gave me directions as to how to find it from the neighboring lawn. ... My first question to him was, ‘Do you think I can make my foundation bigger to distribute the weight better?’ He didn’t know, but that’s what I did.”
Mr. Shick, who has a physics background and has always been fascinated by caves, followed the surveyor’s directions and paid his first visit to the main passage of the lava tube. He was blown away by its wonderful subterranean features and knew immediately that he wanted to give tours.
“The first time I went in, I could only go about 100 feet [30 meters] because there’s a drop off to the bottom,” he said. “I had to clear a trail. ... The third trip, I came in with a rope, and my dad and I went down.
“It was only a 20-foot [6-meter] drop and a 50-meter [164-foot] rope,” he said. “I went down and I shouted back up to my dad, ‘Okay, I’m going to go underneath you and see what’s there.’ I was gone for probably about five to 10 minutes.”
Mr. Shick quickly encountered breakdowns, a buildup of rock produced by the collapse of the cave walls and ceiling, and decided to change direction. He continued to walk the passage for 30 minutes and didn’t want to stop. However, during what would be the first of many explorations, his father was “getting kind of nervous.”
Mr. Shick’s cave entrance, like all the others, is the result of gas expulsion from the underground lava tube as hot lava flowed, cooled, and released gas. “It starts to build up pressure in there,” he said. “When an eruption ends, it leaves behind the cave.”
Mr. Shick said Kazumura Cave is considered a “master lava tube” since it boasts every feature that you'd expect to find in such a formation, including crystals, hanging “lavacicles,” and the eroded channels of lava falls and cascades.
He described one of his favorite features, which is considered a “wow” formation, as comprising knobs of accumulated lava flow that hang from the ceiling of the cave and look like “upside-down mushrooms.”
“They’re just rounded structures that are caused by the current going around them,” he said. “The bottoms of these knobs are scoured with flow lines ... these knobs are huge and they’re hanging from these lava blades, incredibly intricate; the closer you get, the more detail you see.”
A two-hour tour costs $50 per person, and a four-hour tour costs $100. Some of the money goes toward conservation, and some goes toward research to help increase knowledge of the cave, which has become both Mr. Shick’s profession and his passion project.
“There’s more happening down there than I’ve seen in any other cave that I’ve ever been to,” he said.
