“I’m going to invoke the right of first refusal today” Keith says, “if a car comes by either of us is allowed to decide that we are hitching to the next hut.”
“Okay,” I agree, staring ahead at the wall of white and wind.
In a quiet moment I chance a look towards Keith only to be served with a scene of pure misery; hands tucked into armpits, walking bent over against the cold, steps cut short by a night spent in a wet tent without enough water. Though, perhaps the scene which greets me is more like a mirror, my own morale running low. The weather is unlikely to lift today meaning we can look forward to another day spent hiking through a cloud, barely able to lift our faces due to the wind and rain. This hike, at least today, is drifting into type 3 fun in which the experience is only fun told in distant retrospect.
When I hear a car approaching from the rear I feel my heart soar. The sudden excitement reveals to me how over this I am and my mind is made up. We’re going to hitch into the next hut where we can spend the day drying out and planning our next move. I spin on my heels and jut my thumb out while attempting to portray some level of enthusiasm and trustworthiness through my damp visage.
When the car rolls to a stop I can see that it is filled with the most enthusiastic and delightful group of Korean tourists and who seem to be as excited to give us a ride as I am thrilled to be hitching with them. Within a minute of being in the car they bestow us with candy and we make conversation in broken English. They are amazed that we have hiked all this way from Akureyri in this weather, calling us hardcore with big smiles. They are gracious in every way. Out the window they smile and point, delighted by everything their tour guide points out to them. When the car arrives at the Nyidalur hut we all pile out at once and share one more round of goodbyes and thank yous before moving into the hut and going about our own lives, each a background character in the lives of the others.
Walking Iceland Day 6 – Capital W Weather
A drizzle of snow tumbles from the sky amid weak sunlight and blundering clouds as we leave Laugafell Hut behind us and plod the road southbound. At least, I am plodding. Our zero yesterday, though sedate, didn’t feel especially restful and I am a little resentful of being coaxed from the warmth and into motion. After a few hours of plodding my energy returns and I can even find fun in the puzzle of rock-hopping across rivers without getting my feet wet. A puzzle that neither Keith nor myself fully manage.
The weather continues to degrade throughout the day, and what little service we were able to gather yesterday revealed more bad weather on the way. Not just the kind of bad weather that’s unpleasant to be out in, but the sort that’s dangerous. Unfortunately we have neither the food or funds to just wait it out. The season is ending, flights are booked, and sitting around at another backcountry hut wouldn’t provide any assurance that the weather would improve any time soon.
As I sit shivering in camp too cold to gather water to cook dinner properly something about this trip feels like it is ending. A feeling made all the more ominous by the press of drizzling, shivering, silencing clouds which descended upon us in the last hour of hiking. I realize now that the weather in Iceland is going to be like its own character, no longer weather but Weather. A character standing in defiant opposition to the expectations that I had for this trip. Expectations that Weather is making known were unrealistic.
This has been a cold and wet summer, so many people have told us so. And apparently mid-August is far closer to winter in this part of the world than in other regions I have traveled to. As I shiver my way to sleep I can hear Weather outside our tent lashing and rending the wind across the moon-scape terrain. I guess, I think, that that’s the heartbreak of big projects and novel dreams, sometimes they don’t work out.
Walking Iceland Day 5 – Laugafell
Zero day at Laugafell Hut, no miles hiked.
The wind roars and the building jolts as though pushed by some cosmic hand. Even from inside the wind feels powerful. A freight train perpetually barreling down upon and crashing into us with ceaseless energy.
When Keith I arrived at the Laugafell hut last night we were told by the warden on duty that snow and high winds were in the forecast for today; the final sodden straw we needed to be convinced to take a zero indoors. We were established in a small cabin and set to watching the weather blow itself into a storm. In the morning there was snow on the ground.
We spend the day just the two of us doing a dozen tiny things for every hour of waiting and watching the wilds out the window. We sleep late and enjoy a casual breakfast without the need to hurry to pack the tent away. I pad around on feet puffy and swollen from so many continuous hours of being wet. Keith makes tea only to forget about it and drink it cold like he always does. We hold our phones to the window in order to coax what little cell service can be wrung from the air.
In the afternoon Keith finds a list of ranger programs that run from July to August 15th. Today is August 19th and listening to the howl of the wind I wonder if the summer season really is over and that we might be facing a whole lot more of this weather. When we spoke to the ranger last night she told us that snow is uncommon this time of year, and then in a tone which may or may not have been Icelandic joking, that August is almost winter in the highlands. I worry in a useless circle about the weather until bored with myself it is time to make lunch and go back to staring out the window. We’ll just have to see what the highlands hold for us.
Walking Iceland Day 4 – The God of Chips
I pray to the potato chip gods above as I shove another handful of chips into my mouth. Trying, hoping really, that I can calorically jar my legs back into functioning and allow me to finish this climb from the verdant Icelandic lowlands up to the barren highlands.
When I planned out the mileage for this hike I knew that 15 mile days was at the upper end of my physical fitness and now, four days in, the fatigue in my legs is well on its way to making itself known. But beneath that soreness is one of the things that I love specifically about backpacking. That so often the only way out is through. Whereas a bad day at the gym can easily be cut short, having a trail-side meltdown doesn’t get you any closer to being back at your car. Or, as is my present situation, to the southern coast of Iceland. In fact, if I were to bail on this project right now I’d still need to hike 45 miles back to Akureyri. And then I’d still be on the wrong side of the country for my flight home next month. It’s neither a practical option nor one I am close to considering. No, what I need are potato chips, a protein bar, and some water before I pull up my big person hiker pants and get to huffing it up this hill.
My calves burn, my hamstrings ache, and I continue walking uphill, forever onward. I am a small ant crawling across the great face of this planet, eyes on the ground, counting my little ant steps. Then, seemingly all at once the riotously green valley I have hiked through over the last two days vanishes into a monochromatic moonscape. There is literally nothing but rocks and dirt and low-slung clouds as far as the eye can see.
Then, comes the wind.
Rolling across the ground, silent without trees or even grass to break its path. Pushing into me in great gusts of flung sand. And somehow, despite the vastness, the world shrinks in on itself. To a dark undulating moon-scape capped with low flat clouds. Across and beneath I tread on my little patch of earth. My feet hurt, and my legs are tired, but I have committed myself to finding my way across this country which has captivated me for years. So I keep walking; after all, the only way out is through.
Walking Iceland Day 3 – Falling Water
We wake to a morning of patchwork clouds and harlequin farms and turn our feet to the south and walking. We walk past the end of the pavement, past the last house, past the end of the road, past innumerable sheep roaming freely in the hills. And for all our passing we are never passed in return, the day sliding silently by without cars or fellow hikers.
At 3pm, as the sun sluices through gaps in the tumbling clouds our road turned trail tilts beneath my feet and the climb into the highlands begins.
The once broad glacial valley begins to pinch in on itself as water pours from the hills in a torrent. At one point I spy no fewer than 17 waterfalls plunging down towards us.
The definition of falling water is present in all its imagined permutations and I try and invariably fail to capture them with my camera. The sun scatters itself across the vibrant green hills as the clouds chase each other across the sky.
Our camp tonight is just above the collection of all these waterfalls on the banks of a torrential river. Tomorrow we continue our climb into the highlands from where all this water began its fall.
Walking Iceland Day 2 – First Steps
Glacier carved with broad sloping sides, the valley leading south from Akureyri is a hallmark of a prehistoric time when ice covered this land. Cut through with tributary valleys it is easy to imagine great heaves of ice roaring and rumbling their way towards the icy waters of the Greenland Sea. In these moments the land talks to me, whispering its forgotten days, before man, before witness. It echoes the ache in my own chest, the desire to know more, to see behind the roads and signs and into a land which more than one person has told me is full of nothing. But I know that can’t be true, isn’t true. I know that Iceland holds so many stunning vistas and secret beauties and my step this morning is buoyant at the thought of it.
The anticipation pulls me onward while my anxieties drift towards the back of my mind, reluctant to be shaken loose. I’m a little bored during our 20 mile road walk today and I wonder if I’ve grown tired of thru hiking already and what that says about me and about this trip. The tendonitis in my foot is bothering me and I worry that I won’t be able to make it through the hike, that my body will fail my ambitions. Though I suppose the anxieties that come with setting out on something big and new and uncertain are natural. It has taken so much just to get to the starting line of this trip, and now that we’re here there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to finish this hike, something true of all thru hiking.
I’ve been yearning for the exploration of this trip, even the difficulties that come with stepping off the beaten path. But it’s harder to envision happiness than disappointment sometimes. It takes concerted effort to focus on the good and the now and the person that I get to share this experience with. But I’m trying to become that person who sees the good more readily. And in writing this post I’m doing just that.
Walking Iceland Day 1 – Longing
The plane banks low through the clouds revealing the pastoral patchwork of farms outside Akureyri, Iceland’s second largest town and the start of our thru hike across the interior of the country. Over the next three weeks Keith and I plan to walk south across the island nation, ending in Skogafoss, one of Iceland’s most iconic waterfalls on the southern coast. My chest flutters full of butterflies as we come in for a landing and the one thing I have been aching to do is finally here: it’s time to hike.
Getting to this point has been months of logistics and details. From the creation of our own route to planning how we will resupply ourselves across 200 miles without a grocery store or restaurant in sight, nothing about this hike has been given easily. When I first conceived of this hike it wasn’t with an eye towards planning but instead with a question born from a longing to know what was inside Iceland.
On my previous two trips to the country I had driven her coast and now longed to see what lay inside this wild and captivating land.
Our hike for today consists of six miles on a bike path heading south out of the city until the buildings start to fade and the grazing pastures full of fluffy white sheep dominate the landscape.
Kungsleden Day 6 – Protest and Passion
12 miles
My legs protest as I turn from our little camp along the lake and head north on the last day of our Kungsleden section hike. Three days of waking ten or more miles a day around Stockholm followed by five days on the Kungsleden has turned my normal gait into an abridged shuffle. One which takes an hour plodding under the moody low-slung clouds to work itself out and set my legs to churning across the marsh and miles. Glacial valleys pass into rain-soaked valleys which dip and roll into sparse forest. More than sixty miles and in some ways we are exactly where we started, in an arctic forest crossing river after river, some bridged others requiring dancing steps across moss-laden rocks.
If I am being honest, our campsite for the night cannot come soon enough. However, since crossing into Abisko National Park we are relegated to one of two campgrounds along the trail. And so, despite passing a number of viable options I trudge on through tired muscles and a grumbling stomach. Yet, this is not to say I am not fully enraptured by the experience. But rather that joy, unlike fun, comes at the junction of effort and passion. In this moment I am exhausted and my feet hurt and I smell in a way that is both unpleasant and unflattering. And yet, I spent today, tired moments and all, pointing to glaciers peaking through the clouds, watching mama birds wrangle her chicks, and sharing it all with one of the people I love most in this ridiculous world of ours. The discomfort, the pain, they are tied together with the wonder. Without the effort I would not have these moments and it is that which breeds joy.
Kungsleden Day 5 – Fine Dining
9 miles
Below me an aquamarine Scandinavian lake twinkles merrily back up at me while in the distance a cascading waterfall provides a soothing auditory backdrop. In the eternal golden hour that marks both evening and night at this northern latitude I am even spared the flying nuisance of mosquitos. At least for now. A fine dinner scene indeed. And in my bowl a grey-brown paste. A feast of rehydrated beef stew mashed potatoes and something unidentifiably crunchy, evidence that in our haste to eat Keith and I didn’t add enough water to our food. And you know what, my dear reader? It’s absolutely delicious. The play of gluey texture atop random crunchy bits melds with the flavor of brown meat and brown sauce and the occasional bit of onion. Wrapped in the pillowy soft tortilla that has been riding shotgun in my backpack for several days now leads to a culinary masterpiece the likes of which cannot be found on the streets of even the most elevated metropolis. They say that food in the backcountry taste better than the stuff you make at home. And on days like today I can’t figure out who would think such a thing.
Kungsleden Day 4 – Rudolph in the Rain
8 miles
Through the misting drizzle that is becoming a theme on this trip I see a collection of moving rocks strolling gently along the far side of the river. In thinking better than sentient rocks I realize that what I’m seeing are grazing reindeer. Their gently snuffling noses picking through moss and rocks in search of the choicest grass. Keith and I stand for long minutes watching the beauties in their silver-grey coats as jingles from my childhood dance through my head. Unfortunately, finally, the rain and wind get to be too much and we continue our push up to the pass. For the last three days we have climbed methodically up this massive drainage and today we will tip gently into the next one where the rain, ever the rain follows us towards camp.
By the time we hit our mileage for the day we are wet and have been for most of the day. What is worse is that the wind has picked up and has no sign of clearing until well into tomorrow. However, there’s an out. The Kungsleden, like other trails I’ve hiked in Europe, supply a series of backcountry huts offering hikers the opportunity to either wild camp or else pay a moderate fee to sleep in a bunk-style cabin. And tonight I push Keith into abandoning setting up our wet camp and paying for a buck. It’s a decision that which bares some internal dilemma. As an avid outdoors person and someone who posts about this aspect of their life online, I feel the need to put my brave face on, to tough out hard situations so that some invisible audience might think me worthy of their attention. While my more accepting self reminds me that sometimes being out in nature is kinda crap and really sometimes sleeping inside is awesome. And besides, nature is what we make of it, and being challenged is amazing and I love it, but not always and not tonight.