In most cases, the next eruption will build a new cinder cone. Although a strong wind may shape them, most cinder codes are symmetrical. After the column of magma has blown off most of its gases the tephra eruption ceases, and the volcano ends its career by producing a lava flow, perhaps two or three. Th flows typically burst out of the base of the cone because the pile of loose tephra is too weak to support an internal column of magma. Amboy an Pisgah craters stand amid large fields of basalt lava.
Basalt flows typically erupt very quietly and predictably.
Pahoehoe, a Hawaiian term, refers to surfaces that are relatively smooth and locally covered with distinctive ropy coils. The ropy texture forms when molten lava beneath rumples a thin outer skin of hardening rock, much like the surface texture of fudge that cools as it is poured into a pan. No one knows for sure, except that they are among the youngest volcanoes in Southern California. They are too young to date by the potassium-argon technique, which can be used on basalt erupted as recently as about 100,000 years ago. They may be young enough to date by the carbon-14 technique, which can be used for samples as old as about 50,000 years.