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Published: December 14th 2007
Icelandic Ice
Trip report:
http://www.thenorthface.com/na/expeditions/expeditions-2007-iceland.html
Iceland: land of sea, glaciers, sulfer smelling water and fumes, rain, snow, winds, whales, lava and, last but not least ice!
I flew to Reykjavik from London Heathrow. At the counter, the lady told me that I would have to pay 150$ for extra luggage. On Icelandair, you get a penalty for flying with skis! On United, your skis go on for free and are not regarded as a piece of luggage. Go figure! When the man announced the cost, I burst into tears! With so much back and forth, from Ethiopia to the United States, to Switzerland and back to London, by body had a hard time adjusting and so, at that time, it wasn't much of stretch for me to cry when encountering an obstacle. It paid off and i was able to fly at no extra cost!
As we approach the Reykjavik airport, a land of flat tundra and little dormant volcanoes surrounded by ocean came into view. Abby welcomed me at the aiport along with Sarah. They had arrived that morning from Calgary and had already rented a car and scoped out some ice to climb.
Abby is a long time friend and an emigrated Australian native living in Golden, BC (Canada). I first met Abby at Festiglace - an ice climbing competition in Quebec - in 2001. Since then, we have gone around the world together while competing in the Ice World, she's visited me in Switzerland and I've visited her in Canada on several occasions. I met Sarah last year at the Ouray Ice Festival in Colorado and I was so excited that she was coming along on this trip with us, so that I could get to know her better and that proved to be one of the highlights of the trip for me :-)
Reykjavik looks like a small town. Yet, half of the 200'000 Icelandic people call it home. The architecture is rather grey and modern and reminded me a lot of the style of houses in the Swiss-German part of Switzerland. As a first introduction to the Icelandic culture, we treated ourselves to a fish and chips restaurant on the harbour, that offered a variety of three deep-fried fish... hmmm... what a delicacy this was!
Depsite an international moratory on whale hunting and the difficulty to sale the
Who gets to climb first?
A little tension as to who will climb first. But the rain on the ice decided for us as a snow sluff made us decide to turn around!meat, Iceland still kills whales for commercial purpuses. The meat is mainly sold to Japan as they are they are the only people still buying it! It is important to "The North Face" that all expeditions include a sustainable project that helps the local people or industries. So, the main gist of our trip was sustainable tourism over whaling, which includes supporting local whale watching companies who wish the whales to be left alone, and trying to understand how global warming affects whales and the industry. So, on day 2, Elding Whale Watching invited us on their boat to go pay a visit to the whales. 5 mintues into the trip, we were so cold that we all went to get these huge but warm sailor's outfit. We felt a lot like Sumos. We rode the boat for 45mins before finally getting a glimpse of the sea fauna.
First, we saw dolphins who came really close to the boat to play. And then, eventually, we saw whales. This felt more like whale spotting than whale watching, but, by scrutinatsing the horizon, we did manage to see these big mammals coming out of the water to catch their breath and
plunge again to find food for up to 20minutes. Whales have to come up to the surface to breathe and this is how, machiaveliously, whale hunters kill them. This was my first time seeing whales and dolphins and, as exciting as it was, Iwas really happy to not be them, living in really cold water all that time!
Upon returning to the harbour, we interviewed the manager from the Whale Watching company. Whale watching enables people to "connect" with the whales, ackowledge that they don't exist only in books or on TV, and awakens their sensibility to their potential disappearence because of the hunting. Iceland is not doing anything to prevent whaling, because it is so set in their culture. But gradually, people are becoming more and more aware of the current situation. Whale watching is a very new tourist attraction in Iceland. Global warming is affecting whales because their whole bio-system is being changed: waters are warmer and warmer so their food changes along with where they give birth. In a way, it's a good thing for the whale watching industry, because the whales stay around iceland longer, not needing to go further south to give birth in
warmer waters. But in the long run, this will be an issue. And it is scary for us, because you can see signs of global warming all over Iceland, on bigger scale because it is so far north. This means that in years to come, this will affect the rest of the world in a similar way.
We came to Iceland to climb ice. April is definitely not the best season to climb ice in Iceland - or just about anywhere in the world, for that matter! - but we made the best of the meager conditions that we had. We climbed perfect blue ice right outside of Reykjavik at the beginning of the trip. We parked the car at sea level and hiked 3miles down a flat meadow, to the base of a steep snow gully that led to the climbs. It was wild to see the ocean in the distance and feel like we were climbing in an alpine setting. The transition from Sea level to Alpine is very dramatic, much like the change in weather: one minute it's warm and calm and the next, it's pouring down and you feel like you're in a full on
Going whale watching
It was cold, but when the boat started moving, it got instantly colder. We all ran inside to get the big big suits to stay a little warmer! :-) blizzard.
On the way back to the car, a herd of wild horses greeted us, sneaking into the car, our bags and pockets... fearless!
The next day, we headed down the southern coat in search of alpine climbs and more ice. We stopped to look at the black sand beach...
... and continued on to look at the conditions in the mountains. The ice was white and the slopes were super loaded with lots of avalanches showing on the slopes. So, we decided to keep on driving, in search of more ice...
... we found ice floating horizonatally on the ocean, but what we were looking for was more vertical ice... oh well! we kept driving... we saw a lot of water runnels that would surely have been ice climbs had we been there in February, but they were all melted out. However, the potential of ice climbing there is really really immense!
When we were too tired to keep on driving, we stopped to sleep in an A-shaped wooden bungalow on a lake, somewhere on the north-east side of Iceland. We woke up to rain, yet again.
Iceland sits on the rift between
the American and European seismic plate. There is therefore a lot of volcanic-seismic activity there, such as earthquakes (not when we were there though!), fumeroles, boiling mud, geysirs, volcanos (active and inactive), etc. In places sitting on the rift, the water is always hot (up to 100C°!!!) and so houses are heated with the natural water and the water from the tap also comes for natural hot springs. In consequence, the water smells like sulfer and when you take a shower or brush your teeth with warm water, you sometimes wonder if everyone is going to notice that you smell like rotten egg ;-) There is definitely not shortage of hot water in that country and you don't need to feel guilty taking long showers. There are tons of hot pools that you can swim in there and it's the best feeling ever!
In recent years, the snowline is receting more and more. In the valley (in the background on the picture) lives a mountain guide called Jökull Bergman (which means Glacier Mountain Man... predestined to be a mountain guide?!) and he told us that until five years ago, his house would be surrounded with 2-3m high snow walls
until late in April. Now, you have to carry your skis for 10minutes before getting to the snow. It's really impressive how Iceland is feeling the consquences of global warming at such faster rate than us.
We did a nice morning ski tour, before the rain took over again and we got back on the road, driving ever further north and west. We stopped in a pretty nasty looking hamlet calles Reykjanes, on the ocean. The hamlet is pretty much only composed of a creepy looking youth hostel and a hot pool....it was the best way to relax after a long day in the car, before going to bed!
And finally, we found more ice, above the town of Isafjördur (Western Fjörd). The day we got there, the wind was so strong that it was hard to walk down the street. Standing 200m away from the shore, you'd get sprayed by the ocean water! We decided to take a rest day, do laundry, write, do some streching and scope out some more ice lines. Our local contact, Runnar, told us of first ascents to be done. We found them and decided to go climb them after climbing the
lines above town. That night, Runnar invited us to eat at this business partner's house, Sigi. Together, they own a sail boat and take people on 3-4 day ski trips from their boat! It looks amazing! (www.boreaadventures.com).
We did two first ascents and named the right one "Perseverance", because on this trip we had to persevere in many ways: persevere to find ice, to keep on driving, to keep on believing, to keep on communicating... but perseverance always pays off! and the other climb... well... we got to talking about Austin Powers in the car and about the Italian female character: "Allotta Vagina"... and it stuck. Since we were three girls on the climb (and a man: Jared!), we figured that indeed, this name would suit it just fine. We translated it to French and named it in French (I'll let you do the translation)... no comment!
After these successfull ascents, we headed back south to ski a glaciated volcano. We woke up to a bluebird day and were really excited to go ski touring. Driving around a corner we discovered Snaefellsjökull, a 1446m high glaciated volcano. This is what i wrote about our day in my journal:
Mountain
We were hoping to climb the ice line on the right hand side of the picture, but the mountain was too loaded with snow and the ice was white. So, we kept driving in search of more ice Our peaceful drive along the emerald seashore is suddenly interrupted as Sneafellsjokul, a 1446m high peak located at the very end of the Icelandic Western Peninsula, comes into view. This fully glaciated dormant volcano appears like a white pyramid, which has been cut out from the perfectly uniform blue pattern of the sea and the sky. It reigns supreme and solely on this narrow part of the island. Jules Verne had picked the crater of this Fujiyama-like summit as the entrance to his journey to the center of the earth, thinking that there was no place more remote on the planet! We would soon believe this to be true!
We park the car at the end of the drivable section of route 570 - a mountain road that connects the northern to the southern coastline. “So, who’s got a compass?” I ask, as I watch the dark black clouds scaring the blue sky away. Without a compass and a map, it will be hard to find our way along the featureless conic peak. We have no map, but we have a compass. The GPS is resting in hostel! “That’s better than nothing”, I optimistically comment. We wander along
endless rolling hills, covered in black lava features. In Iceland, the saying goes: “If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes”. We stick to that proverb the whole way up, stopping here and there in hope of an break in the complete white out that we are climbing into. More than once, we stop and wonder what to do. “It’s a conic mountain, we can’t go wrong! We’ll make it to the top!” We all push on. The winds are now howling. The spectacular panorama that we had read about and seen pictures of, is really not what we had hoped it would be. But sometimes, the taste of perseverance and making it to the summit, despite conditions being unfavorable, provides greater satisfaction than any view could ever offer!
The altitude on our watches - 1445m - and the flat top mountain inform us that we are standing on the summit. We “high five”, take a picture and strip our skins off. We immediately turn around, snowplowing down, following our uptracks to a T! Abby’s hair is covered in frost, we check each other for possible frostbites and the wind is so strong that our skis barely
Climbing in the rain...
The rock was wet, the vegetation was wet, the ice was wet and not sticking to anything... what are we doing there? glide downhill. Instant relief invades us when we break through the clouds and see the road track in the faraway distance.
As we drive out to Reykjavik later that day, we look back at the summit. The clouds have gone and the summit seems to whisper out to us: “If you don’t like the weather in Iceland, remember to wait 5 minutes… or maybe a little more!
On our last day, we went for a well deserved soak in the Blue Lagoon, a hot pool close to the airport... the water was this amazing milky blue color! it was wild. There is some natural silica mud at the bottom of the lagoon that gives it this milky color and you can put it on your face to exfoliate your skin.... hmmm... I ended the trip in Ethiopia with a visit to the Spa and did it again here.... this could be a habit i could easily get addicted to!
A great thank you to The North Face and to Abby for making this whole trip happen! Please visit www.thenorthface.com and explore the expedition section for more info on this trip!
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