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general travel trip reports

F26 – the Sprengisandur Route

The main road around Iceland is the Ring Road, making a big, convenient circuit of the country. The F26 is an unsealed 4WD only road that cuts straight up the middle, through desolate lava desert that reputedly used to house ghosts and outlaws. These days it’s still a little on the desolate side, with weather that can change rapidly for the worse.

We managed to get fantastic weather for our drive through though, and the landscape, although desolate, seemed beautiful. Really, it was just like where I grew up, just with less grass and trees, and more lakes and glaciers. What’s not to like?

There were a few rivers to be forded, although nothing was flowing too high when we were there. This was the first, and smallest, of the rivers we crossed. I gradually got over my eyes-closed white-knuckled gripping of the car when we had to ford a river… to the point where I’d have one eye open while I hung onto the door of the car and peered out the window.

We passed through Nýidalur, where a couple of huts and a campground sit in a little oasis, and drove on to Laugafell to spend the night. There were a cluster of huts, a campground and a hot spring, all with just the hut warden, a German couple and us to use them. The huts we stayed at (or camped by), were all run by the Icelandic Touring Association, Ferðafélag Íslands, and they were just about the only place we saw the Icelandic flag flying.

We took full advantage of having the little pool to ourselves, splashing around in the warm water, before returning to our tent (keeping an eye out for the glacier lurking behind the huts, in case it was going to make a break for it and rampage towards us during the night).

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general travel trip reports

Getting away from town

Our 4WD picked up (thankfully we were upgraded from the tiny toy Suzuki Jimny to the slightly less tiny Suzuki Grand Vitara) we set off into the great unknown. Not that unknown though, as initially we drove around the famed ‘Golden Triangle’, consisting of Þingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss.

Conclusion: They’re not that golden, unless that’s as far from Reykjavik as you’re able to get.

Þingvellir is mainly of interest as a historical site, being the place where Iceland’s first parliament was founded back in 930, and continued for centuries. It’s also smack bang on the divide between the North American and Eurasian continental plates, so there are some cool holes in the ground, and bits of ground being unexpectedly higher than other bits beside it.

Geysir was the source of the English word geyser. It only geyses sporadically now though, and the regular erupter is Strokkur (which only did a few half-hearted flubs while we were there – apparently it reaches 30m, I don’t think any of the eruptions we saw topped 10m)

not geysir

Gullfoss is a waterfall (foss = falls). I’ll save the photo of that for a massive Foss post, as there were quite a lot of them by the end of the trip. But after driving around the three biggest tourist attractions in Iceland, we were happy to dive off onto a random 4WD track, and camp by the foot of a glacier.

camping

There was just one other vehicle there, and they seemed happy to keep to themselves. After hiking up the mountain by our tent and taking some photos, we had some dinner and curled up in the warm to sleep.

glacier by campsite

The next morning we set off back into civilisation to find some groceries, and then it was to be northwards and into the highlands.

sheep

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general hiking travel trip reports

Day Four of the Laugavegur hike (Botnar – Þórsmörk)

An early start today, as we had a bus to catch. Well, not that early. We left the hut by 8.45am at any rate.

It was raining as we left, and so to get to the Bridge of Peril we had to walk ourselves down muddy slopes using fixed ropes and chains (it’s actually wasn’t terribly perilous at all).

There was more canyon to see, and more up and down through green landscape. The rain cleared again, and we started getting warm as we hiked up little hills.

There’s something about hiking with a deadline that makes everything a little less enjoyable. Rather than just enjoying the scenery we were passing through, I wasted far too much time calculating when we might arrive in Þórsmörk (that’s Thorsmork for those of you that don’t do Icelandic letters).

Nearing Þórsmörk we stopped for lunch in a meadow, then crossed over the River of Doom – so high that a lot of people were stripping down to underwear to cross. We just made do with getting wet pants.

I had memories of reading of the verdant alpine oasis in Þórsmörk, with great forests. I’d forgotten that this was describing Iceland, where they don’t have trees. The trees were wee alpine birches, and the vegetation in general reminded me of coastal scrub in Australia. It was definitely a change from the Landmannalaugar end of the hike, but we both preferred the stark and colourful mountains of the start of the hike.

In the end we reached the bus stop at Langidalur hut an hour early, and had plenty of time to sit on the grass and watch the 4WDs fording the glacial rivers that were flowing across the huge plain in front of us. We were wishing we’d planned to hike the extension, continuing on to the south for a few days. And wondering what would happen if one of the volcanoes errupted. In each of the huts there’d been a map of the area, showing the areas which would flood in the case of an erruption (something to think about when you have volcanoes hiding under great glaciers), and what escape routes you should take.

Our trusty 4WD bus arrived on time though, and whisked us away from the volcanoes and glaciers. I lost count of the number of times we forded rivers on the way out, although the stairwell of the bus only filled up with water once. We were headed back to Reykjavik, and to pick up our rental 4WD.

Distance: 15km
Terrain: Overall 300m elevation loss, but lots of uphill nontheless

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general hiking travel trip reports

Day Three of the Laugavegur hike (Álftavatn – Botnar)

When the Moosling woke up and started rampaging around at 7am, we decided we may as well bow to the inevitable and get up. On this hike, at least in the huts, sleeping in seemed to be the order of the day, with plenty of people not even bothering to roll over in their sleeping bags until it was at least 9am. With such short hiking days, there’s no real rush about anything though.

We were out on the trail shortly after 9am (I know, I’ve got no idea how we got ready to hike so quickly either, we’re like lightning in the mornings). The sky was clear, but within ten minutes we had our boots off for the first river crossing, Bratthálskvísl. There’s nothing quite like freshly melted glacier to wake your feet up.

We meandered on in our sandals, and it wasn’t long before we arrived at another nearby hut, Hrengvellir. There we donned boots once more, and added on some rain gear – the mizzle had been getting suspiciously close to being drizzle.

For a while afterwards the hiking track followed a jeep track, one of the 4WD “F” roads that criss-cross the interior, and range in quality from “well, I could do that in a 2WD, it’s a bit bumpy though” to “OH MY GOD WE’RE GOING TO DIE!”. More on those later, once we get to the portion of the trip where we’re driving in our rental 4WD.

The jeep track brought us to another river crossing. This one was a doozy; a big wide river with a strong current and water that was creeping well above our knees. All at glacial temperatures. It wasn’t actually difficult so much as extremely cold though, and the Moosling happily slept through the entire thing. We had no plans of hanging around for photos on this crossing, and it was looking ferocious enough that we didn’t want to do it separately. Luckily a German couple were crossing at the same time as us, and the wife bravely returned to the river to pose for some photos (to show their daughters what their crazy parents had gotten up to in Iceland).

After the river crossing the terrain settled into endless flat ash desert, that I’ve heard others describe as boring. Perhaps in comparison to the days before… but there was still an enormous glacier to the left, and madly tortured volcanic mountains sprouting from the plains. With a flat track to travel along though, the view was slow to change.

Until suddenly we rounded a corner, and there were the Emstur-Botnar huts, tucked in not quite at the foot of the glacier, but not far from it.

It was just a short walk away to the canyon of the river Markarfljot, and so with plenty of time up our sleeves, and our things stowed on our bunk, we went for a wander. As an aside – one of the oddest things about the Icelandic huts was turning up and having to find out from the warden which bunk you had been assigned to (I’m used to the free-for-all of Australian or Canadian huts).

The canyon was spectacular, and definitely the highlight of the day scenery-wise. Although I was a bit wary of getting too close to the edge, it looked a bit inclined to collapse at any moment. A busload of people turned up on the far side of the canyon and we sat there for a good 20 minutes waiting for one of them to fall in, as they got closer and closer to the edge. No-one did (although there were 6 free spaces in our hut that night, supposed to belong to people who never showed, so maybe….)

Back to the hut we cooked dinner and chatted with hut companions, then I took the Moosling for a crawl around the boardwalk (there were three huts that each slept 20, plus a toilet block, all joined by boardwalk, just the thing for crawling adventures).

Distance: 15km
Terrain: Overall it’s flat, but I seem to recall there being annoying bits of up and down anyway

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general hiking travel trip reports

Day Two of the Laugavegur hike (Hrafntinnusker – Álftavatn)

The morning brought a little mizzle, so we pessimistically donned all our rain gear. The rain gods thanked us for our humility, and declared an end to the rain for the duration of our hiking that day.

The ground steamed at us, the mountains were dark, the mountains were colourful, the snow patches had ashy residue, and ridiculously bright green moss highlighted quirks of the landscape.

We spent the first half of the hike climbing down into and then out of the creases in the landscape. Lots of little gullies were still filled with snow, and some obvious snow bridges had streams flowing under them. Nothing collapsed beneath our feet.

And then suddenly the scenery changed, and instead of colourful rhyolite mountains and ashfields and moss, we were faced with a prehistoric landscape that seemed like it should have dinosaurs casually meandering through it. Bright green, with traditional volcano cone-shaped mountain-lets, and an enormous glacier lurking to the left, just below the clouds.

We descended into the green, but no dinosaurs appeared. Perhaps they’d eaten all the trees and then moved on. That’s definitely a feature of hiking in Iceland, not the dinosaurs, but the fact that there’s nary a tree or animal to be seen. We did see several birds over the course of the hike, and a few bugs hovered nervously nearby, but seemed too shy to come up and have a bite of us. Oh, there were some sheep though, hanging around occasionally, and wandering past when we least expected it.

The hut that night was by Lake Álftavatn. We’d seen it as soon as we were in view of the prehistoric valley we were about to descend into, but it was still kilometres away, and kept tantalising us with glimpses as we gradually hiked closer. It couldn’t keep that game up forever though, and eventually we reached it.

There were actually twin huts linked by boardwalk that would also take you to the toilet block, which included a couple of showers (they would even be warm showers if you paid 500ISK). We glared at the showers and maintained our eau de hiking aroma.

A quick deal with the hut warden had us moved from one of the big sleeping rooms into one of the small private rooms – just two beds, and just the thing for the Moosling and his Papa to fall asleep on while I went out for a walk … until it started to rain on me. Everyone arriving later that day started turning up absolutely saturated.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent chatting with people in the roomy living/cooking area of the hut. Or for those in the party under the age of one, it was instead spent chasing around cups on the floor of the hut, and grinning at everyone who glanced at you, and possibly offering them your socks. The friendly driver/cook from one of the guided groups offered us some of their leftover lamb soup (absolutely delicious – I could definitely handle hiking with a cook).

Distance: 12km
Terrain: A bit hilly, with an overall altitude loss of 490m