A short, 0.8-mile walk down the Mauna Iki trail from the Kaʻu Desert trailhead on Hwy 11 brings you to a field of scattered footprints preserved in fragile sediment and continually being revealed and reburied by windblown sand. A few are protected under a roof; enjoy these rather than risk destroying others by tromping off the trail.
In 1782, Kamehameha killed his cousin. Kiwalaʻo had just become the new ruler of Hawaiʻi Island, but Kamehameha was having none of it and summarily defeated him at the Battle of Mokuohai. Keoua (Kiwalaʻo's half-brother) wanted to settle the score – which is how he and his army came to be marching through the Kaʻu Desert during a particularly nasty eruption remembered as Keonehelelei (the falling sands).
Despite days of offerings to appease Pele, Kilauea belched a massive cloud of steam, hot sand, suffocating gas, rocks and ash that swept across the Kaʻu Desert on hurricane-force winds. Two-thirds of Keoua's warriors were caught in the sticky wet hell-storm. As they gasped for breath, stumbling to their deaths, their feet left ghostly footprints in the muck. That muck dried, preserving the gory moment for all eternity. Or at least that's how famed geologist Dr Jaggar imagined it.
While hundreds, if not thousands of warriors did die in that blast, new evidence suggests the footprints likely don't belong to them. Pyroclastic surges like that were apparently a regular part of Kilauea's cycle between 1500 and 1790. The footprints – which include those of women and children – are more likely records of normal life persevering in this harsh landscape.
