Hveravellir - July 2 2015

Our bus passes skirt the ring road after Akureyri and takes the Klöjur highland route on an F road through the interior, eventually popping out at Gullfoss in the south. Which was sweet because that's the route we wanted to check out! F roads are only 4x4 friendly as they are usually dirt or gravel and may require a river fording or 12. So it was back onto the MONSTER truck bus!!

Bus views

Heading into the highlands

There's only a couple of stops along this road as it is neither inhabited or cultivated. In fact it's only passable in the summer after the snow has cleared, usually by mid June. Being a much colder winter than average it only opened a few days before we crossed it and the seasonal camps we stayed at were still very much in the process of setting up. We stopped for the night at Hveravellir nature reserve, a geothermal area with a hot pool, hot springs and fumaroles. The campground sits in a meadow with a hot creek running alongside it. We looked to be the only campers until a few private groups and tours showed up in their super jeeps later in the evening.

Our lone tent

There's a couple of hiking trails in the area, though the longer ones were heavy with snow and mud. We checked out the steam show and then hoofed it out across the snowy plains for a 13km hike out to an old crater and viewpoint.

Don't play with the rocks

Interestingly, tourist made cairns/rock piles are completely abhorred in Iceland, as it messes with their own longstanding route markers. Also it messes with their own rock placing history and with tourists outnumbering the population significantly every year the numbers of cairns are growing exponentially. So just don't play with the rocks, it's literally some kind of bylaw.

The hike was relatively flat with varied mossy, geothermal rockey and snowy scenes. Pretty enough to keep it interesting.

It ends up on the rim of an old crater with views out to the glacier and neighboring mountains. It turned out that one of the mountains across the valley is where we were headed the next day.

Our next day's destination way across the valley

As a side note the Siminn data plan I got for my phone totally worked out here on the crater in the middle of nowhere, and I was able to enjoy the view while iMessaging my homies in Canada. That kind of blew my mind. Of course it wasn't solely to keep the internet close to my heart. We got it strictly for safety as you can use the 112 app (their emergency service) to send your GPS coordinates and call for help should you fall down a mountain or get lost in the fog chasing sheep. And given how good the coverage is it's pretty legit. We felt fully covered for all our hiking.

Steamy hot creek campside

In the end we never ended up using the lovely hot pool because it started pouring rain and the wind got really cold and I was just too lazy to face walking there and back and having no way to dry off. I'm a princess you say? Yeah, sometimes.

 

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