It has been a while since I last hiked out to Goat House Lava Tube. A bit obscure, the tube hides in the grasslands outside Waikoloa Village, accessible with a modest hike.
With the new eMTB this tube is even easier to get to. The power line access roads are rough, simple tracks just scraped into the lava, but fun. A good road to enjoy with a full suspension bike bouncing over the bare rock.
Goat House is an old lava tube, somewhere between ten and twenty thousand years old. It shows it, the cave is notably worn and shabby, quite different than a fresh tube. There are numerous skylights available in the section I have explored, which is maybe a quarter mile long. It does appear that other sections can be found both mauka and makai, the skylights visible in the satellite imagery.
This old lava tube is found in a Mauna Loa pāhoehoe lava flow just south of the village. So much of the lava around Waikoloa is aʻa, very rough and jagged. It seems odd to find a smooth pāhoehoe flow, even if hidden in deep grass. Aʻa lava does not generally form lava tubes, these are usually found in pāhoehoe flows.
Goat house is old enough that it has seen the formation of some cave features usually associated with limestone caves. There are mineral deposits on the ceilings and walls, even fine little mossy stalactites of some calcium mineral. In other places whole sections of the wall or ceiling is covered in a thin layer of white flowstone.
I am surprised, even in the dry grasslands of Waikoloa I find drips of water hanging from some of the formations along the roof. We have had a very dry winter so far, with no heavy rains recently. Yet still, there is water here.
There are, of course, the usual lava tube formations here and there. Lavacicles run in wavy rows along the ceiling, at least where the ceiling has not broken away to be found as boulders across the floor.
As I pass through a skylight I am startled by a large shape passing silently overhead. It is a barn owl, I note the the nest on a ledge well overhead. A second owl is perched on the rocky rim appraising me. Am I a threat?
I prowl around under the nest looking at the massive collection of thousands of tiny bones. This nest has been occupied for decades, maybe longer. Femurs, ribs, and skulls smaller than my thumbnail speak of the untold multitude of mice and rats that have met a silent death in the night.
Among the bones I find a beautiful feather, cream with a russet tip, and dark tiny speckles. I tuck the feather into the cycling helmet I am still wearing it to protect my head from the jagged rock of the cave ceiling.
This tube is a graveyard, not just of mice and rats. True to the tube’s name goat bones litter the cave. My guess is that sick or infirm goats come here for the shelter, and die here. There are thousands of bones, usually scattered, but a few skeletons further back in the cave are in more recognizable arrangements. One mummified goat is mostly intact, a more recent addition to the ossuary.
Another surprise, I find a small lava stalagmite along the side of the tube. These are rare, usualy the lava drips into still molten and moving lava on the floor of the cave, failing to form a stalagmite. This one looks like a tower of dripped wax, blobby and missshapen, about 15cm tall.
This visit I try to find the lower extent of the tube, my way complicated by a massive rock fall choking the tube. I worm my way through it a bit, at first along the tube wall, then a bit on top of the rockfall. The situation gets a little more sketchy than I feel comfortable with. I stop and consider, then back out, retracing my route into the rocks. The tube may go further, but I will not, not today.
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