Devastation Trail, Volcanoes National Park, Hawai'i

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
4/13/2026	1 mile	35 minutes	76'	1.9 mph	88.8

Parking: 

• Devastation Trailhead, Intersection of Chain of Craters Road and Crater Rim Drive

Map:

• Gaia GPS app
• National Park map 

Directions:

• There are multiple trails starting from this trailhead. Take the paved Devastation Trail and hike to the Pu'u Pua'i Overlook. Return the same way.

Someone recommended hikes from the Devastation Trailhead to us. There were multiple ones, and we did this as our second one. It is a paved hike, and not nearly as exciting as the Byron Ledge Trail that we had just done. There's a view at the end, but there were many people there too, as there is a parking lot at the view. The view looks out onto a crater where there was a large eruption in 1959. We saw people hiking across the crater - it looked very cool, so I wanted to do that too! On this hike, we also started noticing tephra in the trees. During volcano eruptions, tephra comes down from the sky and lands everywhere.

The line across the middle is a trail across the crater.

This hike is the green line.

Zooming in on the trail across the crater.

We saw tephra (lava rocks) in the trees.