Hallo everyone, Beardy here,
I recently found myself in the North of Iceland for a week, and had the chance to get away for a bit of a wander. It was quite a remote place, but the hills were in plentiful supply, and I set out on my first solo day hike.
Here's the view as I set off up a wide valley floor, Farmer Giles's (or should that be Farmer Gisli's?) irrigation ditch in the foreground.
And this is back down the valley from where I set off - a rough-surface road runs along the shore here behind the summerhouse, and you can see across the fjord and to the next peninsula.
Looking up to the sides as you go along the valley, you always seem to get a wall of rock atop a slope of scree and loose stones. On top of the rock visible is a plateau of sorts that stretches out at right angles to the direction of the fjord, pointing at the closest shoreline it seems. It's a very common feature that I've seen in Vestfirdir, and it's also interesting to see the various different layers of rock in the cliffs.
No matter how many times I see this scenery, it always impresses me. So barren, but quite formidable too.
Well, despite the terrain being very open (Iceland has very few trees, and then they are usually pretty small), it still came down to trusting my compass, given all the rocks in the way - damn volcanism
But all went well, I walked a bearing from where I imagined I was on the map to a series of small lakes and what do you know, atop the next ridge I walked right up to the middle of one frozen of course, well it is ICEland you know...
The snow cover was getting more now... Not very deep, but snow cover in a boulderfield gets really annoying, you think you can put your foot somewhere and the next thing you know you've got it stuck in a yard deeper than it should be and have twisted your ankle someplace very remote, very cold and without mobile signal! A LOT of Iceland is fields of rock...
Back down the valley towards the fjord:
A bit of snow above the 4 or 500m mark:
Small cairn marking the top of the saddle I was walking up a shallow and rounded reentrant to, taken from above:
Once reaching the top of the saddle that my path continued along from, I made a brief detour to my left to bag a spot height of 670m, not terribly high but a lot of peaks in this corner of the Westfjords seem to be just under 600, which is a little frustrating if you need to build up quality mountain days with a 600m minimum climb - not sure of the name of the summit as the map was really vaguely marked. If anyone knows of a source for good quality mapping of Iceland like our OS, please let me know!
Here's where I also sat down to lunch and made a massive error - still warm from my climb up, I kept my warm kit off for the time being, and took off my gloves for a minute or two to get my sarnies sorted. With the wind up there that wasn't a smart idea, and even though the actual temperature was only about -2 or -3c, the windchill meant my fingers were numb within that short period of time.
I had no means of making fire as it was only a day trip, and to be honest even if I had I doubt my fingers would have been capable of manipulating themselves to use it - dexterity and motor skills really suffer. Rubbing my hands together did nothing, putting my gloves back on did nothing as there was no heat there to be trapped anyway, and placing them in my armpits did very little except letting more heat escape from my torso. It actually got to the point where I was pretty afraid - what could I do with such little use of my fingers, and how long does it take to go from 'unable to feel fingers' before you get to 'onset of frostnip/bite/hypothermia'?
I had a Thermos so resorted to grasping a cup of tea to get some warmth back into the hands and also down my neck, then chucked on all my warm kit and ran down the other side of the hill for five minutes! Luckily the running got my blood pumping enough to get my fingers back to normal again - it was only my extremities that were that cold, the rest of me still had warmth. Well, I tell you, there was frost on my beard after all that but the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.
Lessons learned: warm kit is vital if you're in these areas in the winter, and it's not enough to carry it and put off wearing it for a bit like you might in the UK, it needs to go on as soon as you stop. A thin pair of cheap, non-windproof polyester fleece gloves you use for gardening and dogwalking aren't going to cut it at 66 degrees north - I will not scrimp on gloves again! Some method of reheating hands would've been a good idea too (and the Thermos was a boon) - but I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted here. I should also have had a thin stretchy pair of 'contact' or 'magic' gloves on underneath my normal pair, so if I needed to remove gloves for some fiddly task (which is what got me) I would still have some insulation to avoid my fingers becoming the next discounted special offer in Iceland's frozen food section.
Back down where there is no snow after my little jog (the next fjord and the next peninsula beyond that is visible):
Back from whence I came:
More typical Icelandic rock layers for any geologists amongst you:
You can really make out the moss or lichen which is very pervasive in Icelandic nature in the foreground here. It's usually very spongy and seems to change colour when it's rained on!
The road into the next town, a family's summerhouse (summerhouses and cabins in the country seem very popular in Icelandic culture) and some of Iceland's rather rare white-sand beaches in the next fjord (most beaches are black sand from volcanic rock, so this is quite rare):
Just before the next town, I took the opportunity to indulge in a trip to the hotpot with the girlfriend, all-natural-with-algae styley. Seeing as the country is built on top of magma, hot water comes freely out of the ground in quite a few places, and you can often find natural or old fashioned hotpots in the midst of nothing but nature, free to anyone to use - yey for volcanism! The view from this one is magnificent but I was too busy relaxing to snap any photos!
Hope you enjoyed the trip!
Cheers,
Beardy
I recently found myself in the North of Iceland for a week, and had the chance to get away for a bit of a wander. It was quite a remote place, but the hills were in plentiful supply, and I set out on my first solo day hike.
Here's the view as I set off up a wide valley floor, Farmer Giles's (or should that be Farmer Gisli's?) irrigation ditch in the foreground.
And this is back down the valley from where I set off - a rough-surface road runs along the shore here behind the summerhouse, and you can see across the fjord and to the next peninsula.
Looking up to the sides as you go along the valley, you always seem to get a wall of rock atop a slope of scree and loose stones. On top of the rock visible is a plateau of sorts that stretches out at right angles to the direction of the fjord, pointing at the closest shoreline it seems. It's a very common feature that I've seen in Vestfirdir, and it's also interesting to see the various different layers of rock in the cliffs.
No matter how many times I see this scenery, it always impresses me. So barren, but quite formidable too.
Well, despite the terrain being very open (Iceland has very few trees, and then they are usually pretty small), it still came down to trusting my compass, given all the rocks in the way - damn volcanism
But all went well, I walked a bearing from where I imagined I was on the map to a series of small lakes and what do you know, atop the next ridge I walked right up to the middle of one
frozen of course, well it is ICEland you know...
The snow cover was getting more now... Not very deep, but snow cover in a boulderfield gets really annoying, you think you can put your foot somewhere and the next thing you know you've got it stuck in a yard deeper than it should be and have twisted your ankle someplace very remote, very cold and without mobile signal! A LOT of Iceland is fields of rock...
Back down the valley towards the fjord:
A bit of snow above the 4 or 500m mark:
Small cairn marking the top of the saddle I was walking up a shallow and rounded reentrant to, taken from above:
Once reaching the top of the saddle that my path continued along from, I made a brief detour to my left to bag a spot height of 670m, not terribly high but a lot of peaks in this corner of the Westfjords seem to be just under 600, which is a little frustrating if you need to build up quality mountain days with a 600m minimum climb - not sure of the name of the summit as the map was really vaguely marked. If anyone knows of a source for good quality mapping of Iceland like our OS, please let me know!
Here's where I also sat down to lunch and made a massive error - still warm from my climb up, I kept my warm kit off for the time being, and took off my gloves for a minute or two to get my sarnies sorted. With the wind up there that wasn't a smart idea, and even though the actual temperature was only about -2 or -3c, the windchill meant my fingers were numb within that short period of time.
I had no means of making fire as it was only a day trip, and to be honest even if I had I doubt my fingers would have been capable of manipulating themselves to use it - dexterity and motor skills really suffer. Rubbing my hands together did nothing, putting my gloves back on did nothing as there was no heat there to be trapped anyway, and placing them in my armpits did very little except letting more heat escape from my torso. It actually got to the point where I was pretty afraid - what could I do with such little use of my fingers, and how long does it take to go from 'unable to feel fingers' before you get to 'onset of frostnip/bite/hypothermia'?
I had a Thermos so resorted to grasping a cup of tea to get some warmth back into the hands and also down my neck, then chucked on all my warm kit and ran down the other side of the hill for five minutes! Luckily the running got my blood pumping enough to get my fingers back to normal again - it was only my extremities that were that cold, the rest of me still had warmth. Well, I tell you, there was frost on my beard after all that
but the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. Lessons learned: warm kit is vital if you're in these areas in the winter, and it's not enough to carry it and put off wearing it for a bit like you might in the UK, it needs to go on as soon as you stop. A thin pair of cheap, non-windproof polyester fleece gloves you use for gardening and dogwalking aren't going to cut it at 66 degrees north - I will not scrimp on gloves again! Some method of reheating hands would've been a good idea too (and the Thermos was a boon) - but I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted here. I should also have had a thin stretchy pair of 'contact' or 'magic' gloves on underneath my normal pair, so if I needed to remove gloves for some fiddly task (which is what got me) I would still have some insulation to avoid my fingers becoming the next discounted special offer in Iceland's frozen food section.
Back down where there is no snow after my little jog (the next fjord and the next peninsula beyond that is visible):
Back from whence I came:
More typical Icelandic rock layers for any geologists amongst you:
You can really make out the moss or lichen which is very pervasive in Icelandic nature in the foreground here. It's usually very spongy and seems to change colour when it's rained on!
The road into the next town, a family's summerhouse (summerhouses and cabins in the country seem very popular in Icelandic culture) and some of Iceland's rather rare white-sand beaches in the next fjord (most beaches are black sand from volcanic rock, so this is quite rare):
Just before the next town, I took the opportunity to indulge in a trip to the hotpot with the girlfriend, all-natural-with-algae styley. Seeing as the country is built on top of magma, hot water comes freely out of the ground in quite a few places, and you can often find natural or old fashioned hotpots in the midst of nothing but nature, free to anyone to use - yey for volcanism! The view from this one is magnificent but I was too busy relaxing to snap any photos!
Hope you enjoyed the trip!
Cheers,
Beardy
