Posts Tagged ‘Iceland’
Glacier Hike
Day three had us headed back to the Vatnajökull Glacier again, this time on a tour where we could stand on it, touch it, and even drink from it. It was the second and last guided tour we purchased.
We were fitted for crampons and provided ice picks. While having us fill out our personal information, including any medical concerns they should know about, they offered to take photos of the groups. Even though none of our activities required specially trained responses, both tours we did gave every impression of being well-capable professional guiding companies.
They took our picture again.
We had just ridden in a bus to the point where we needed to start hiking. With a kick of her boot into the gravel, the guide demonstrated how the glacier pushes the rubble up in a ridge which then becomes a lake as the melting happens.
It was a significant hike with a fair amount of vertical gain to reach the ice.
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I looked up and had a flash vision of the photo of climbers waiting in queue to get to the summit of Everest.
Yes, there are a lot of tourists in Iceland. We were tourists, too, so it’s not that I could complain.
The glacier experience was powerful enough, nothing else mattered in the moment. Having this opportunity to step onto such a mass of ice when the drama of our warming planet is melting glaciers to oblivion felt emotionally heavy.
When we reached the gravel transition to gravel-covered ice that soon became just ice, we were given a quick lesson in securely strapping on crampons.
Soon, we were learning about glacier moulins where a weak spot in the ice becomes a pool that drains over time.
Our guide explained that melt water is safe to drink, but it “must be done” by a prone position with our hands on an ice axe. She positioned her axe and demonstrated the pushup position technique before giving us all a chance to try it.
It tasted awesome. She pointed out that the melt water lacks minerals that are contained in well water that has been filtered through the earth into underground aquifers.
Our guide parked us for a moment so she could check on a crevasse to ensure it was still safe enough for us to approach. The height we were allowed to climb on this finger of the glacier was limited to below where serious crevasses were forming.
She also allowed us to step over a deep moulin where, a day or two earlier, she had lost an ice axe. The handle was still visible a few feet down.
The ice scenery was something special to witness. Probably more so because the melting was so significant under the sunny sky this day. This was a privilege that won’t likely be available to future generations.
In 2024, walking on a glacier that is in the process of disappearing before our eyes is a unique experience. I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity.
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After Lagoon
After the exhilaration of the zodiac boat tour, it seemed like it would be hard to keep the thrills at such a high level, except our “super-planners” had packed each successive moment with more to see or do. There would be no time for a letdown. Even travel time in our rental SUV offered a constant barrage of unique and fascinating landscapes to keep our minds overflowing with wonder.
Plus, learning to decipher unfamiliar highway signage and coping with a combination of other unfamiliar tourist drivers and local business vehicles with their own sense of purpose on the narrow Ring Road offered video-game levels of challenge. We relied heavily on the voice directions coming from Mike’s phone plugged into the dash.
The glacier lagoon was the farthest eastward we would travel on the southeast coast, as we then circled back the way we’d come to visit the Svartifoss waterfall in the Skaftafell Nature Reserve. Just an easy 2-mile hike from the car park.
Barb’s step-counter tallied our total distance hiked over the whole trip at 54 miles. (That’s 87km for those of you wondering.) Two miles was hardly a blink for us, although all the hikes tended to involve a fair amount of elevation gain to be climbed, making mere distance an incomplete measure of effort required.
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The afternoon warmed considerably, making our stroll along the trail toward the main attraction more pleasant than we believed possible. Remember, we had been prepared to face cloudy days with chilly horizontal rain pelting us head to toe.
Each time we experienced more sun than clouds, I pinched myself to check if I was dreaming.
Ten miles further down the road, we arrived at our hotel for the next two nights. Appearing somewhat like a motel we might find on Route 66, Hotel Skaftafell proved to be classier than meets the eye. The restaurant was truly fine dining.
When I reached the pomegranate seeds in my salad, I remembered I had wanted to get some photos of our food.
For our entrees, Cyndie selected lamb,
and I chose cod. It was a work of art.
It was the end of only our second day. Wow. Really, just wow.
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Another World
Two things: I’ve described the intense, stiff wind and mentioned our luck with the weather, which applies pretty much to the entirety of our visit to Iceland. The wind was strong enough when we climbed down out of that giant bus at the location of their floating dock, one of the zodiac boats full of tourists returning from the previous cruise had difficulty landing.
The driver needed to come around for a second attempt. In the moment, it didn’t give me pause about what “too much” wind for such outings might look like.
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In an instant, we were on board and speeding away toward the glacier “finger,” bouncing along on the swells the way zodiac boats do.
Suddenly, I realized it was no longer windy. We had been transported to another world that bore little resemblance to our previous vantage point.
I’m uncertain if I remember correctly, but I vaguely recall hearing the distance from the mouth of the lagoon to the edge of the glacier was about 5km. Our guide was quick to provide conversions, so the five could have been miles.
It didn’t matter. It seemed like we must have gone a hundred miles.
Without wind, the blazing sunlight warmed things considerably and rewarded us with sightings of many sunbathing seals. The overly cute aquatic mammals love the lagoon because there is a broad selection of fish to eat and no predators to worry about. Makes for a perfect recipe for photo-happy tourists.
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Our guide described the limitations of getting closer to the icebergs since they are larger beneath the surface and can roll over unexpectedly. I asked about his familiarity with the lagoon, and he pointed out it is never the same twice. Icebergs appear and disappear constantly.
While we were idling as the guide took photos of each group, a significant mass calved away and splashed into the water. It is such a bittersweet experience. I never imagined I would witness this massive power of nature firsthand, but it was such an exclamation of how dramatically this glacier –all glaciers– is/are melting.
When the wave from the calving reached the flow in the picture on the right above, the ice broke into many pieces, and the seal slid out of sight into the water like this happens all the time. It was mesmerizing to have this all occur right before our eyes.
Our guide kept moving our boat around to provide additional spectacular views. Suddenly, he stopped and bent over the side of the boat and popped up with a chunk of the glacier for us to see and hold.
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We learned about the coloring of ice and how the different bands (wavelengths) of the rainbow contained in sunlight are absorbed or reflected based on the amount of air in the ice. That chunk has had all the air compressed out of it.
The return leg of the trip back to the dock brought us back to bouncing on high waves and wrenched us out of that dream world. This was only our second day, and we had probably just experienced one of the most fantastic adventures of a lifetime.
Spending that time close to icebergs in that lagoon was truly out of this world for me.
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Iceland Arrival
We booked our airline tickets more than a year in advance of our chosen dates. We flew to Detroit to catch a plane to Reykjavik. That doubled my challenge of getting through security checkpoints without major complications. Cyndie and the Wilkuses enjoy TSA precheck privileges, so they went off and left me to fend with the standard security.
Yes, I forgot things in my pockets and had to double back and make a second go of it. Rookie traveler.
We flew overnight with a plan to sleep on the plane and be ready and raring to go upon arrival. That only sort of worked. We were all a bit bleary-eyed as we navigated our way through the airport and to the car rental office.
The process wasn’t exactly smooth, but it ultimately played out flawlessly. The agent mentioned car doors getting wrecked, and I asked how often that happens.
“At least one per week,” was her reply.
That triggered our establishing a mantra of Doors/Diesel/Dings to remind us of important details about our vehicle. Mike did the lion’s share of the driving and did a great service of parking in a direction that kept the wind pushing our doors closed instead of ripping them open.
We packed all our gear in and headed for the first scheduled stop on the itinerary Cyndie created: a bakery for coffee and pastries. Next, we found a grocery store and loaded up on lunch fixings. From there, we headed east along the south coast for our first waterfall, Seljalandsfoss.
The only way I knew that name is by looking it up just now on a copy of our itinerary. I was helpless against the local language and didn’t even try to cope with pronouncing the collections of letters forming words. If I heard someone else speak, I could try to mimic the sounds I was hearing, but the results were rarely pretty.
The waterfall, however, was gorgeous.
This beauty offers the feature of being able to walk behind to see the falls from underneath. We put on our rain pants and jackets and joined the conga line of tourists snapping photos and getting doused.
What did I do? I took a photo looking straight up, of course.
It’s a little disorienting.
It was official. We had arrived for the first adventure of our visit to Iceland. We learned how to pay for parking at each attraction. We made use of our rain pants right away. The rest of that first day included another waterfall, a lighthouse, a black beach, and, ultimately, a modern hotel on the Ring Road in the village of Vik.
After dinner at the hotel, sleep came easy.
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Iceland Trip
We are home from our great adventure of 10 days exploring portions of Iceland with our great friends, Mike and Barb Wilkus. Iceland is a very special place on this planet, and we are grateful that we were able to experience it in surprisingly nice weather and successfully achieve everything we planned without a glitch.
I found more trees than I expected!
But there was plenty of landscape without.
We hiked to a lot of waterfalls.
We saw a fascinating amount of varying geology that provided dramatically more vivid evidence of the earth’s history than where we live in Wisconsin.
We soaked in a number of geothermally heated pools and hot tubs, of which there are few photos out of respect for other bathers’ privacy and desires to avoid getting our cameras wet. We were able to experience the awesome spectacle of a glacier in real life, even as it was melting away beneath our feet. And finally, the good weather provided multiple nights of viewing the Aurora Borealis displays, which was a primary objective for Cyndie.
That was a special bonus.
There are many more photos (taken by all 4 of us) and stories that I hope to present soon. The planning for this trip began almost two years ago and included consultations with a travel agent and advice from one of my Brainstorms internet community members with first-hand knowledge. (Many thanks, JH!)
I cannot take any credit for preparations as ALL of the work was done by the other three. They collaborated to arrange our flights, rent a vehicle, plot a route, book rooms in different hotels and an Airbnb on a farm, and even make reservations for meals at some restaurants. They even packed necessary bags to facilitate grocery shopping so we could make our own meals at times and picnic in the car for lunch on a few different days.
Despite my distaste for traveling, particularly by airplane, the fact that Barb and Mike are such wonderful friends and Iceland is a place of such spectacular things to see and experience made it easy for me to truly enjoy this adventure.
There were only a few instances where I was reminded of the famous photo of many teams of mountain climbers waiting in a queue on the approach to the summit of Mount Everest. It was a rare instance when we were able to experience uncluttered views of waterfalls, volcano craters, geysers, or beaches. Early morning proved to be the secret to being the first car in the parking areas.
We didn’t have to deal with much in the way of precipitation in our locations, but high winds were a common occurrence. It made cool days into bitterly cold ones, threatened to hyper-extend door hinges in a moment of inattention, and even challenged our abilities to remain standing a few times. Made it feel like we were on an adventure, it did.
That was a fabulous trip, and I am lucky to have been included. I plan to write more about our experiences in the days ahead.
Thanks for returning to read after so many repeated days of tree trunks. I hugged our mother tree on our walk with Asher yesterday morning.
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Final Details
We are at that point in the story where the main characters are working multiple lists simultaneously in preparation for their adventure vacation as tourists visiting Iceland. Test packing happened Monday night. All systems are a go.
Now I am in the second-guessing mode. I packed once, but now I’ve been into the bag a few times to get toiletries or grab something out of my carry-on bag. I also thought of a couple of things to add. Will I remember to put everything back? Will I remember where I packed everything? No. No, I won’t. Based on past experience, I have a terrible time recalling what nifty little pocket I’ve stashed certain things, thinking it’s such a clever location.
Meanwhile, I’m ticking away at the property work I want to finish before we go.
One valuable task that is less visible than others is the management of manure composting. It has been so wet this year, I’ve had a tough time keeping the piles active. As a result, I can’t move them out as often as I’d like to make room to create a new pile for the never-ending supply of fresh manure. Since we are going to be gone for almost two weeks, I wanted to provide ample space for our horse sitters to dump the manure they will be cleaning up every day.
Yesterday, I crossed that goal off my list. New space is achieved.
That was much more rewarding than my fruitless attempt to dig again in search of the buried power cable. That project will be waiting for me when we return.
I did successfully complete the trimming of grass beneath the back pasture fence line with enough gas left over to also clean up a portion of our trails. Then I mowed the front and backyard around the house.
This morning, I need to drive to Hudson for a windshield replacement before returning home to finish off the last of the grass cutting. If there is something unfinished after that, it will need to wait until we return stateside.
For the record, last night Cyndie was very busy finding new things to bring and rethinking what was going into her suitcase. It served to heighten my second-guessing about what I “test packed” the other night.
In my opinion, managing the manure composting area is a lot easier than packing for a trip to visit Iceland.
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Relative Something 