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| Heading towards Kerlingarfjöll |
A short trip back on the MONSTER truck bus delivered us to Kerlingarfjöll, a little oasis in a volcanic mountain range. Lucky for us the bus goes all the way into the campground saving us the 8km walk off the main road and a river fording.
We were also blessed with superb sunny weather even though we could see rain pouring down in just the next valley where we were yesterday. We pitched camp in a beautiful sprawl of grass between a hills and the river running through and headed out to trek after a late lunch.
Kerlingarfjöll normally has a plethora of hiking trails running through the geothermal mountain range, including multi-day hut to hut treks. But alas we arrived only just after the season opened and everything was still coated in snow. The hot pools a half hour walk from camp hadn't yet been located this season and were apparently buried in snow and rocks sliding down the hills. Even the road leading up to the Hveradalir geothermal area, some kilometers inland from the camp, was still snowed over and inaccessible. Hveradalir is the main attraction in the area and literally means something like hot spring valley, where the multicoloured rhyolite mountains drop down into a spectacular valley filled with fumaroles, hot springs, boiling mud pots and a beautiful freezing river. Lucky for us stubborn hikers had already broke trail over into the area and we were able to do the 12km route without too much difficulty. It perhaps was even more spectacular due to the fact that you hike up into the high snow covered plateau of the mountain range, and then see steam vents pouring out through them in a seemingly incongruous scene of extremes. I thought it was awesome!!
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| We're headed to those mountains |
As it often is in Iceland, the decent into the actual valley was pitched rather steeply and fairly sketchy from my North American perspective, leaving you to exercise your own best judgments on how close is too close when it comes to walking near or over vents and boiling water sitting basically on the trail. But it was also ridiculously rad.
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| Frenchies getting ready to cross |
Turns out when we got to the valley floor you had to ford a somewhat fast flowing and seemingly too deep river (for my short self anyway!) to get to the trails that lead you around and back out. That is unless you're content to turn around and basically walk straight back up into the mountains. No thanks! We found 3 hikers contemplating the crossing when we got there, an older french couple and a young lone hiker we met earlier on the trail, who had tried to cross but found it too deep. Us 3 youngen's decided to walk upstream a bit to the widest point and walked carefully over the hot vents perched right on the water edge. The ground was hot to stand on and the water was frigid. Anyway we stripped down to our skivvies, held hands and trotted across. Followed shortly by the older couple after we threw back our probing stick. Sweet.
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| Boiling water |
After exploring for a bit we headed back up to the 'road' and followed it back to camp with Jo, our river crossing friend. Turns out she was only something like 19 and hiking and camping around Iceland on her own. Way more bad ass then us! |
| Following the road back |
On a random note half the campers in the kitchen were either Spanish or spoke it so we stayed up chatting after dinner and then crashed hard at 10pm. Turns out walking forever in snow is pretty tiring!
Tomorrow we're back on the MONSTER truck bus and out in search of 4th of July hot dogs. It's quite lovely here and we'd stay longer if the hot pools and remaining trails weren't still buried. Guess we'll have to hit 'me up next time!
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