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Surface Flow Walk - AVAILABLE
Guided Lava Walks
Our Surface Flow lava walk is your best opportunity to experience flowing lava “up close and personal”. This amazing adventure lasts from six to eight hours, and covers at least eight miles round trip. This distance changes from day to day, so call for current conditions!
We leave from our property located on the 1990 lava flow, and guide you across private and public land to the leading edge of the current flow, wherever it might be at the moment. With these types of surface flows, it is quite safe to walk right up to the edge of the glowing lava.
This is an all-day hike, and we offer only one walk per day, departing by 9:00 AM at the latest and returning before dark. You may bring your own lunch, or we can prepare one for you at a cost of $15 per person. 
Who Can Do The Walk?
Because of the distant location of the current surface flows, this walk requires six to eight hours from start to finish. Only experienced hikers will be able to undertake this all-day adventure. Most of the walk crosses raw lava fields where there is no defined trail. Lava can be crumbly or slippery, and sometimes the footing is not very stable. We encounter many cracks and crevasses in the lava fields. Therefore this walk is classified as strenuous. It is not suitable for young children under the age of 12, or anyone who has difficulty with balance or long hikes. In general, we do take it nice and easy, and go as slowly as the group needs to in order to feel comfortable.
Also, there are gasses and fumes that emerge from the active lava zones which can trigger asthma conditions or aggravate people with respiratory conditions. Most of the walk covers areas that are not currently active and therefore do not emit fumes.
Cost & Payment
The cost of the Surface Flow Walk is $100 per person. You may pay after the tour is finished, there is no need to pay in advance. We want you to be confident that this is a genuine professional lava tour and not some shady operation!
We can accept only cash onsite at the time of the tour. You may also pay in advance by PayPal or credit card by using the payment button below.
Our small groups are booked on a first-come, first-served basis, so please call ahead to avoid disappointment.
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My husband and I did the surface lava flow hike on Feb 13, 2011 with Steve and Ken and it was an amazing experience! We felt totally safe the whole time. Steve and Ken were very experienced, informative and all around nice people. This is the reason we went to the Big Island – to see Lava! The other tour companies we tried failed us. Kupahua Adventures and Ken and Steve were just what we were looking for – a personalized tour, not a hug group. The best part? We got to poke a stick into fresh, red and yellow LAVA! Yes, we got to poke it? How cool is that. The pictures were amazing and looking at them makes me want to go back again and again. We did the 5:30 pm tour so we got to see the sun set and walking back in the dark really wasn’t bad as the moon was almost full and they supplied flashlights, gloves and the sticks! If you haven’t done this, it is worth the trip and the tiny price Ken and Steve charge (we gave them a big tip as we think they could charge hundreds for the experience) for this lifetime adventure. Mahalo Ken and Steve! <3
This tour was great. Walking across the older lava formations is an enticing prelude to seeing the red hot flowing lava as the sun sets and darkness brings out the richness of the liquid rock.
On the night of our tour there were breakouts both back from the shore and at the ocean entry. Ken, our guide, showed real enthusiasm for the lava, keeping our group out on the rock for much longer than promised. Three groups from another company came and went during the time we all gawked in awe and wonder at the splendor of melted rock gliding along the ground.
We came to the Big Island to see the lava and we got what we came for.
Hi Steve and Ken,
I am traveling with my friends in May to Big Island. We would love to do the 5:30pm Surface Flow Walk and were wondering if you are offering them again.
Furthermore we would like to know if we have to face ‘melting shoes’. Some reviewers are mentioning burned shoe soles after the hike, so should we better bring some old worn out ones or would we be fine with normal sport shoes. And finally, would you recommend this tour for people afraid of heights?
Thanks a lot in advance. Talk to you soon,
Patricia
We are monitoring the eruption closely and will update the website when lava starts flowing again.
We are still taking people out on our lava beach tour, which is more of
a cultural and interpretive experience. You will get a good sense of how
the lava has created so much new land and what life is like for us out
here on the lava flow. The Cave of Refuge is also quite fascinating. This daytime walk works very well with kids, too.
Regarding melting shoes on the surface flow tour, it is an optional
“experience”. Sometimes a nice lava breakout opens up, but you need to
cross over some solidified hot lava to get close to it. So I will lead
people safely over the hot lava if they so choose — but it is never required. Better to have sturdy shoes with good ankle support than old worn out shoes. Also, fear of heights is not a factor. There are some sea cliffs on the lava beach walk that you can choose to peer over the edge, but there is no need to approach them either.
So mahalo for your interest, and please accept my warmest aloha!
-Ken