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Published: November 23rd 2009
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10:00 PM
We had chosen to stop off in Skogar because of how close it was to Sólheimajökull, but despite being nearby, it took a very long time to get there. The site was a short distance off Route 1, along one of Iceland’s many unpaved roads, this particular one full of rocks and potholes, and yesterday’s storm had left pools and small rivers flowing across the road. Eventually we abandoned the car and walked, realising that we weren’t going to get all the way without a 4x4.
As we arrived, pretty much on time as oppose to the 20 minutes or so early as we had planned, a small group were leaving the meeting area and heading for the glacier. Thinking we may have turned up too late, we ran after them (well Lyndsey did, I strolled merrily behind and left the work to her) and asked if we could still join them, but it turned out that this was a different party and our guide had yet to arrive. Gradually, more people arrived until there were about 8 of us, then the tour guide, called Maxim, arrived and we were ready to go. The tour was
almost cancelled due to the high winds, but they decided to go ahead with it in the end, and so following the initial showing us how to use crampons and ice picks, we were on the glacier.
Sólheimajökull is retreating pretty fast, the base now 132m further back than two years ago, and in another couple of years that base will be a lagoon. The base already had a couple of icebergs in it, and once the lagoon fills up with water from the retreating glacier, they will be floating merrily with the intention of attracting tourists and sinking unsuspecting boats. The retreat of the glacier has ‘global warming’ written all over it, but those oft stated theories on the environment do not necessarily automatically hold here. The entire glacier has only been here for 400 years or so, before that much of the area was farmland which was flattened by the advancing ice, so this seems to be a natural reversal of a recent event rather than the heating of the planet taking away something that has always been there.
The glacier is full of little holes and crevices burrowed out when the water flows
down it, looking for little gaps to let gravity do its thing. This was particularly evident today from the amount of water that had flowed down after yesterday’s storm. The glacier became around 1m deep for every 1m we walked into it, Maxim gave us this fact when we were around 100m in, and asked us not to fall into any of the holes, as the rope he carried in his backpack was only 60m long. Once we were at this point, the winds also started to pick up, and we could see why they had been in two minds whether to cancel the tour or not. Despite the conditions, Maxim was pretty good at showing us parts of the glacier and giving us a brief history, and within what felt like a matter of minutes, our allotted couple of hours was up and we couldn’t go any further without a slightly more advanced knowledge of ice walking.
By the time we were back off the ice and had driven down the dodgy road back to Route 1 (which looked, in parts, like it had been washed away between us arriving and departing from the glacier), it was
after 6.00, and not long into the journey back towards Reykjavik, the sun was coming down just over the Westman Islands as we passed them on the coastal road.
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