Day 3 - Urriðafoss, Seljalandsfoss, Sólheimajökull
Day 3 began our drive down Route 1, which is commonly known as the Ring Road. In other seasons, the Ring Road is the crowning tour of Iceland. Just 828 miles of road takes you around the entire country, to glacial lagoons, towering waterfalls, black sand beaches, staggering canyons—it’s the kind of nature that leaves you breathless and borderline emotional. In the winter, the road conditions in northern Iceland can be unpredictable, so it’s more common to stick to the south shore, which is what we did. Our turn-back point would be Höfn, and our itinerary was a relaxed, 4 day drive there.
Even with the dozens of itineraries to reference online, it was still hard to pick which sights we’d stop for on the way there and which we’d stop for on the way back, while also being mindful of how long each stop would take, how much driving in one day was too much driving, etc. Our first 2 stops were waterfalls Urriðafoss and Seljalandsfoss. (Icelandic names are an eyeful and a mouthful; I won’t even attempt to pronounce the words in the title, but just know that anything “-foss” is a waterfall.) Seljalandsfoss is definitely one of the more famous Iceland waterfalls. It’s also very accessible, which means there will probably be tour buses and tons of tourists. Our experience there was a bit underwhelming because of the average lighting conditions and the crowds—definitely takes some of the magic away.
The rest of the day was set aside for a glacier hiking tour at Sólheimajökull. We booked ours with Extreme Iceland. It was super awesome and I really recommend it. It’s not technically challenging and it’s a unique way to experience Iceland’s majestic glaciers up close and personal.
Once we checked in, the guides demoed how to get set up with the gear. There were helmets, crampons for when we were actually walking on the glacier, ice axes that essentially served as trekking poles, and harnesses for who knows what because we didn’t actually use them. Everyone filed through a school-bus-turned-gear-station to gear up. Then we split up into smaller groups and set out towards the glacier with our respective guides. The initial walk to the glacier was about a mile across a gravelly glacial valley. Our guide explained that this section was the most dangerous, gesturing towards the mountain slope on our right. Apparently the area was known for falling boulders, some smaller, others the size of cars. A comforting thought for our journey.
Even though this first part of the tour was just getting to the glacier, the views were gorgeous: white patches of ice against black gravel, snow laced mountains on both sides of us.
At the end of the rockfall area it was finally safe to stop. From this close, we could see the glacier’s crevasses ahead of us like jagged mountains. A tiny group is assembled right at the foot of the glacier in the middle of the photo above. It was crampon time!
The crampons had a set of spikes in front and in back, and strapped over our hiking shoes. Even though the trails were well worn by glacier walking tours before us, the crampons still provided much needed traction.
Standing directly on the glacier made it easy to appreciate the powerful forces behind this natural phenomenon. Glaciers form from snow that gradually accumulates and compresses, creating enormous pressure that ultimately transforms it to ice. Without the air bubbles and impurities, the ice takes on the bluish hue that glaciers are known for. Glacier ice is also extremely pure. So pure in fact, that our guide used a drill to extract bite-sized cylinders of ice for us so we could all say we got to eat a piece of a glacier that day.
The guides also showed us some cool designated photo opps, like this narrow crack that we all took turns climbing into.
It was getting pretty dark when we started heading back, but there was a moment of glowy light when the sun managed to crack through the clouds. Last two photos starring our wonderful guide!
