Our family had gone a few miles on this trail years before, but since then I had wanted to hike all the way back to the vent of the lava flow. Seth was in Island Park hunting, the kids were at school and the trail is too uneven/rocky/spiky for dogs, so I saw the kids off to school and went by myself on the 11-mile hike on Thursday, September 28.
I had the trail to myself the entire time, which could be troubling if I hadn't had a cell signal the entire time. Seth checked in with me multiple times throughout the hike, but besides slightly twisting an ankle, everything was fine on my solo hike.
This trail is different than most because there isn't really a trail. Rather than following a dirt path through a forest, the entire trail is over lava rock and therefore isn't really ... followable. Instead, you have to look for poles painted red at the top and hike toward them until you see the next pole. Sometimes it was easy to see the next pole or even multiple poles. Sometimes I would get to a pole and have no idea where the next one was, so I'd keep hiking in the same general direction until I'd catch sight of the next marker. Sometimes I'd have to pull out my phone with my hiking app that was tracking the trail and my location on it and change course to get back on the trail.
When I got to the end of the trail according to my app, I thought, "This isn't much different than what I've been seeing the entire time. I guess there isn't much of a point on going all the way to the vent." Then I saw a crater just a little farther ahead of me. As I approached it, I realized that the crater was much bigger and deeper than I had thought. That was, of course, the actual vent. And it was absolutely worth going all the way to to see.
There's no coverage on the entire hike, so it made sense to go in late September when it's cooled down. This would not be a fun hike in July or August.
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