Töuchíng þe Voið

June 1st, 2004 · No Comments

After the Pixies concert on Wednesday night, to which we arrived, I must say, uncharacteristically late and about which I showed remarkable restraint considering I’d flown across the Atlantic expressly for that moment, Ásdís made some about the fact that I wouldn’t have to worry any more the rest of the trip, that I’d done what I’d come to do.

Sunday night, as I sat at her kitchen table, sore all over, with a sunburnt face and chapped lips, replaying nightmares of slogging down a snowfield attached to seven Icelanders by a 100-foot rope, she admitted that she wasn’t exactly being honest when she said that. I had no idea what I was getting into when we set off four hours east from Reykjavik to Skaftafell in order to climb Hvannadalshnúkur, the highest peak in Iceland. When I read it described as an “unforgettable walk,” I did not picture myself in a climbing harness, roped up to a team of eight, slowly tacking my way up a steep ice face with crampons and an ice axe in a white-out. No reason for them to advertise it; I’m just trying to express my continuous feeling of surprise throughout the fourteen hour hike. It took us eight hours to get to the top of the nearly 7,000 foot mountain, about as long as it took Pemba Dorje to set a new speed record climbing Everest last month. The six hour return trip, much of it spent plunge-stepping down the slushy snow of the upper half of the mountain, as well as wondering where exactly I had started, was the real kicker, as I was already pretty beat halfway through the ascent.

Anyway, enough about how hard it was, and how I kept counting to a hundred and saying all of the Icelandic placenames I knew in my head (“Myvatn… Mosfellsbær…Snæfellsness…”) in order to avoid going crazy and because I wasn’t about to strike up a conversation in Icelandic with anyone around me – enough. It was an incredible day, a real challenge and an eye-opening experience. Some images seen by those now-open eyes:

First step: crossing the field of rocks – volcanic, conglomerate, probably even some karsts and schists in there (thanks, Brophy and Cheney):

hvannald_rocks1.jpg

Crampons on:

hvannald_crampons.jpg

Over the glacier:

hvannald_glacier.jpg

Crampons off, up the mountain:

hvannald_rocks.jpg

Over the mossy hills:

hvannald_moss.jpg

Up the snow field:

hvannald_snow.jpg

Stopped for lunch, and realized we’d just walked under a massive rainbow, as we look back at the glacier we’ve crossed:

hvannald_rainbow.jpg

Ásdís and me at 1400m, just before my battery died from the cold:

hvannald_sun.jpg

Tags: Travel