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In Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, routes across lava fields are marked by cairns—piles of rocks, obviously manmade and sometimes quite elaborate, even playful. You’ll also find cairns marking a few of the trails outside of the park. I found the cairns to be reliable guides. However, it can be hard to tell a cairn from the rest of the rocks in a field of aa, the rough, chunky kind of lava. Be sure you have the next cairn in sight before you move from the present cairn. Once you’ve moved on, check behind yourself occasionally to keep track of the cairns you’ve left. If you discover that you’ve gotten off track—you’ve missed the real cairns and have been following odd heaps of aa—you’ll be prepared to retrace your steps to the last real cairn. It happened to me more than once! Cairns can be hard to follow in rain, fog, or snow; avoid cairn-marked routes when the weather is poor or the route is under snow.

Supplemental information

At the bottom of most of the trips, there’s some extra information about the historical significance of places you’ll see along the route. Or maybe there’s a story—a myth, for example—related to the trip that I hope will add to your enjoyment of the trip. Perhaps there’ll be a bit more information about the plants in or the geology of the area. I put most of the supplemental information at the end so that it doesn’t interfere too much with the description of the trip itself. I think safety dictates that you give your attention first to the trip and only secondarily to the supplemental information. That is not a problem with easy and very easy hikes, so the supplemental information is often part of the main description in those hikes.