@gorillapaws Oh, no, it was hotter than hell, and it was a sunny day. I was hiking in long sleeve shirts and jeans despite the fact it was over 80 and the lava was black. I had 5 liters of water with me. Part of the reason we were with long pants was because the lava was so sharp we were worried about scraping ourselves. The gas was our primary concern and that’s actually why we turned around. So when we started smelling more than just faint sulfurous fumes we turned around.
The actual “walking on flowing lava” bit lasted a few seconds. We were hunting for moving lava and we saw it above us, so we walked up to intercept to look at it, hopefully not get too close. It was then we realized that we miscalculated and we actually got ourselves onto a hill between two rivulets of lava. We could have hiked back down but the crust on top actually looked pretty solid. I threw a couple of rocks and they bounced normally, so I bounded across it to get to safety.
On the way back we actually ran out of water but I had kept well hydrated. I fell once and ripped my shirt and got bloody. We got back to the trailhead and the park ranger was desperately trying to get a couple of tourists in flip flops to turn around. They saw us, sweat soaked, blood stained, and exhausted come off the trail and they said, “Fuck this” and turned around. The ranger thanked us.
In retrospect it was an asininely stupid thing to do, but heck, it makes a good story.