Kerlingarfjöll - July 3 2015

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!!

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.

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.

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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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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