Iceland: Definitely Not in Kilimanjaro Shape These Days

 From Monday, September 20

I’ve come to the conclusion that if the words “Krystina” and “camping” come together, they come together along with the word “rain”.  Growing up, the few times we went camping it seemed like we got rained on.  On Kilimanjaro we got rained on A LOT...almost every night.  And here in Iceland, I may be inside a van, but it still has rained every night.  I’m so glad I’m not tent camping.  I think I’ve found my type of camping and it involves a campervan with a heater.  I don’t have to worry about the rain or the wind.  And boy was it windy last night.  So much wind!  I’m sure being in the wind amplifies it a bit, kind of like the rain sounds worse that it really is much of the time, but still, it is windy down here on the south coast.  They’re saying winds tomorrow could hit 15-20 m/s (who measures wind speed in something that you can’t easily go, “ah yes, that’s fast”.  Measure wind in kph!), which I guess is 54-72 kph if I did my math correctly.

But what about today, Krystina?

Well, I started my day in Vik.  It as cold and windy/rainy so I just chose to get on the road and head out instead of making breakfast.  What I drove through today was fascinating.  A couple hundred years back, 1783 in fact, one of the volcanoes on the south coast erupted in a fantastic manner.  Caused destruction, through ash and debris all over the south end of the island (in an area called the Eldhraun), and sent gases into the air that not only poisoned the local plants and people, but is also credited with crop failures across Europe.  In fact, they say that Iceland’s population decreased by ⅕ in the aftermath.  But what it left behind in the Eldhraun was a bunch of lava bolders, that have spent the past few centuries gaining all sorts of moss and lichens.  When you look across these bolder fields you just see roundish green things. 

I stopped at this interesting stop along the way.  There was a board explaining what I saw.  It said that about a millenia ago a man lived in the area and his house was destroyed by the first eruption of the volcano Katla (since Iceland was settled).  Since then it has been tradition for visitors to the site to leave a stone to honor the man who lived there, so there are piles upon piles of stones all around the area.

There were probably a few hundred piles from 1-4 feet tall. 

I also passed through an area where in 2011 a glacial burst from the Myrdalsjokull glacier, where essentially a bunch of water held within a glacier bursts free and goes flowing downhill the easiest way until it runs out of energy or makes it to the ocean.  It completely wiped out a section of the Ring Road.  Apparently there is a segment of Iceland public works that is an emergency bridge building team and they got to work as quickly as possible to remove debris and build a new bridge and fix the road.  They opted to make the channel the bridge spanned narrower because they said that part of the problem was the slow flow of a wide river caused silt to fill the bottom, making the river shallower.  Now the channel is narrower, but moves at a much swifter flow so they hope it will help, should it happen again.

I went through a section today that was literally just flat and black.  There was less life there than in a desert.  Hardly any plants.  Mostly just small lava boulders and black sand.

As I neared Skaftafell National Park, there was another area that was devastated by a glacial burst back in 1996.  They said that in the leadup to that burst a volcano in the Vatnajokull Glacier (the largest in Europe) started erupting.  The volcano was below the glacier, though eventually it melted a hole in the surface.  But anyways, all that heating of water caused some under-glacier lake to decide it needed more space and flowed down the glacier, taking out whatever was in the way.  Including a part of the Ring Road (familiar huh?)

I arrived at Skaftafell around lunchtime.  Had my first lunch not made by me in a few days at the cafeteria in the visitor’s center.  After that, I hiked up to Svartifoss.  I know enough Icelandic to know that “svart” means black and “foss” means waterfall.  The hike up there was a doozy.  It might not have been so bad, if not for the stairs up Skogafoss yesterday.  It was roughly a 270m vertical hike spread out over 1.8km.  But the waterfall was worth it.  It was so unique because it was made of those geometric columns that you wouldn’t think were natural, but totally are because they are found a couple other places on earth too.

Skogafoss

Warmed up, and with still a couple afternoon hours I decided to take the trail from Svartifoss to Sjonarnipa, which overlooked the Svinafellsjokull Glacier.  That part was relatively easy.  It was mostly flat(ish), which was part of the reason I decided to take it.  It was 2.4km across.  When I hit Sjonarnipa, I was overlooking the glacier, which was a rather neat view.  From there I headed back down to the visitor center.  It was on my way down I second guessed my decision to take this trail back down.  I probably would have died if I hadn’t taken my hiking poles with me (probably a slight exaggeration).  My knees might have died, but I probably would have been okay.  It was a very steep descent, and a portion of it was rather close to the edge.  It was muddy and wet.  But by the time it had gotten like that I was already about 1km into 3, so I decided to just keep going with it.  I survived, but am not sure I’d recommend that trail to anyone in the future.

Svinafellsjokull Glacial Lake

Camped out at Skaftafell tonight.  Tomorrow I’m supposed to be kayaking Jokulsarlon Glacial Lagoon, as long as the winds play nice.