Digital Wanderer

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Iceland — 12, day 5 — Landmannalaugar

2012-09-18

Landmannalaugar is the center of mountain tourism in Iceland. And for good reason.

Already at the entrance, it was noticeable what a significant number of cars, buses, and just plain humans were located near the info center.

Muddy water of a brownish hue with swirls of algae and mineral deposits. Patches of green grass, moss, and stones are visible along the banks.

But what met us after the ford wasn't this, but steaming streams of water with thick vegetation. "The water's warm," I figured. And indeed. A hot spring, where you can enjoy the sweet languor in your whole body that comes from a long stay in water at 40 degrees or more, was located just a hundred steps from the info center. That is, of course, if your step is a meter long, like that of bikers starved for warmth and comfort like us.

A group of tourists in raincoats stands in front of information boards against a hilly mountain landscape under a cloudy sky. A part of a wooden building is visible on the right, and the flag of Iceland is flying in the background.

On the horizon — a hot spring

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I think the tents are identical because it's a tour group, and the organizer's tent

Upon arrival, we went for a walk. Andrey, of course, wanted to climb into the hot spring and do nothing, but he ran into my logical question, which has been raised in this blog many times already. Why go anywhere if you're not going to look around? He constantly asks it to everyone himself, and here he decided to slack off again.

By the way, the campsite wardens are very friendly and knowledgeable people, they will tell and show you everything, sell you maps if necessary, so you don't have to figure anything out in advance — everything will be clear anyway.

 

A person stands by a concrete reservoir with a steaming geothermal spring, from which a stream flows. Wooden tourist cabins, green hills, and fog-shrouded mountains are visible in the background.

Boiling water from a pipe, gotta be careful

From a rusty pipe cut into a dark wall with limestone deposits, a stream of water pours into a murky pond. Around the pond, wet earth with green grass is visible, and steam rises from the water.

A panoramic view of a green geothermal valley, where steam rises from the ground, against a backdrop of sloping mountains covered with moss and exposed multi-colored rock, under a gray sky.

The steam from the water always creates airiness and lightness, feels nice on the soul

A tent camp and wooden cabins in a valley among hills of solidified lava covered with green moss. Multi-colored rhyolite mountains rise in the background under a cloudy sky.

This is what the whole complex looks like from above

On the left — toilets and showers, up close — an overnight stay for the chosen rich, on the right — the info center.

 

A man in a dark hooded jacket stands in front of a large dark boulder amidst a hilly rocky landscape covered with green moss, under a cloudy sky.

Obsidian, obsidian everywhere, the most famous volcanic rock

Hard, but brittle, the edges are very sharp. It's not hard to make excellent stone tools out of it, especially knives, which primitive people often did. In the now-popular TV series "Game of Thrones" based on the book "A Song of Ice and Fire", obsidian daggers are used to destroy evil blue non-humans.

A winding trail runs through a rocky, mossy landscape, leading to fog-covered mountains under a cloudy sky.

The trail advances through unearthly landscapes

A young man in glasses and a black hooded jacket crouches among the stones, resting his hand on a large glossy black rock against a background of green moss.

A punk in awe

A man in a hooded jacket stands with his arms spread wide on the rocky shore of a lake with turquoise water. In the background rises a steep hillside covered with green moss and stones.

Again, water of my favorite color

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I'm as emotional as a 15-year-old girl, and that's why such sights wring squeals of delight out of me

A geothermal mountain landscape with steam rising from moss-covered rocks, a winding trail in the valley, and multi-colored peaks in the background under a cloudy sky.

Especially up close

 

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It never gets old

A gloomy volcanic landscape under a cloudy sky, with swirling white steam rising above rocky slopes covered with green moss. A winding dark trail passes through this harsh landscape, leading to dark mountains on the horizon.

I could admire it endlessly

 

A geothermal landscape where thick steam rises from rocky ground with mineral deposits, against a backdrop of dark mountains under a cloudy sky.

Fumaroles smoking away

A fumarole is a hole from which hot gas escapes, hydrogen sulfide, or just steam with salt impurities. All this settles on the nearby stones, and they become covered with a white coating.

Thick clouds of white steam rise from a rocky slope with geothermal activity. The volcanic landscape is covered with stones in light and dark shades.

Covered like this

A mountain landscape with multi-colored hills in ochre and brown shades, on the slopes of which patches of snow are visible under a cloudy sky. In the foreground is a rocky slope covered with green moss.

Mountains can be red

A foggy landscape of a geothermal valley, where white clouds of steam rise from dark volcanic fields covered with green moss, and blurred outlines of mountains are visible on the horizon under a cloudy sky.

And smoking

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And green

In a misty mountain landscape, multi-colored slopes with patches of snow and sparse greenery are visible, fading into the distance. In the foreground is rocky ground with a trail.

A cloudy sky over a mountainous volcanic landscape with a rocky foreground. Dark rocks, patches of green moss, multi-colored rhyolite deposits, and small patches of snow are visible on the mountain slopes.

Two wooden signs at a fork in a trail going up a rocky mountain slope. One of them says "BRENNISTEINSALDA-VONDUGIL" in white letters, the other says "LAUGAVEGUR".

The trails are color-coded, but it's not hard to make a mistake, pay attention

A winding dirt trail climbs a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a gray cloudy sky.

Climbing up Brennisteinsalda to look around

A person in a dark hooded jacket sits under the vault of a natural snow arch on rocky ground. Gentle hillsides are visible in the background.

Looked around, time to climb down

A person in dark clothing stands on dark, rugged rocks covered with moss, with a rocky trail in the foreground and a bright sky above.

The black soul of the deadly mountains

A rushing mountain stream flows along the bottom of a deep rocky gorge. The slopes are covered with dark crumbling earth and large stones overgrown with green moss.

 

A winding trail leads through a rocky landscape covered with bright green moss, beyond which a deep canyon and multi-colored mountains are visible under a cloudy sky.

You just expect a troll to crawl out from behind a rock, or maybe the rock itself will come alive and trample you

A tourist in a raincoat walks along a wet muddy trail with rope railings running along a mountain stream. Around spreads a harsh volcanic landscape with rocky slopes covered with green moss, and a steaming reddish-brown mountain on the horizon under a cloudy sky.

And here we are

I'll throw in a couple of photos from Flickr for you, so it's clear how mind-blowing this looks in sunny weather on good equipment.

A multi-colored mountain landscape with hills in shades of brown, gold, and green, partially covered with snow, under a clear blue sky. In the bottom right, three backpackers walk along a snowy trail.

from here

A panorama of a volcanic landscape with multi-colored layered mountains in shades of ochre, beige, gray, and bluish, among which turquoise lakes are visible. In the foreground are dark rocks covered with moss, including a tall pointed formation on the right.

And it looks like this too. Photo from here

A volcanic landscape with a multi-colored rhyolite mountain in the background, sharp dark obsidian stones in the foreground, and steam rising from the ground under a blue sky.

Obsidian, and behind it a fumarole is smoking. Comprende?

What else can I tell you about Landmannalaugar?

It's very crowded there, which is why the atmosphere of friendliness and camaraderie that usually reigns in campsites somewhat fades, at least in my feelings, which cannot be trusted completely anyway, because they change a hundred times a day.

A large building with a high gabled facade made of vertical slats and a smaller adjacent wooden structure. Between them is a wooden deck with tables and people walking or sitting under a cloudy sky.

A dining area next to the toilets and showers

A lot of colorful clothing is drying on clotheslines in a room that looks like a laundry room or locker room, with a row of white lockers and a long countertop with several metal sinks. The wet floor reflects bright light from large windows in the background.

Clothes are dried near the toilets, which creates an unpleasant impression

Two information sheets are pinned to a wall indoors: the top one contains a poem about a smile in English with drawings of smiling stars, and the bottom one is a warning about swimming at your own risk in the Landmannalaugar springs.

The positive poem is meant to raise morale, but looks like a mockery

A rocky trail in the foreground leads to a green valley where steam rises from geothermal springs and the Icelandic flag flies. The landscape is surrounded by mountains with dark and colorful slopes under a cloudy sky.

What really raises this very morale are the Icelandic flags at every campsite

In general, campsites look to me like rare little villages among mountains and forests filled with monsters, like in the game Zeliard, and the flag in this matter adds the final touch. It evokes an unimaginable nostalgia that hardly anyone other than me will be able to understand.

Screenshot from a retro video game: a character near a log cabin with the sign "BANK" talking to an old man against a backdrop of snow-capped blue mountains. The game interface is displayed at the bottom of the screen with health and gold indicators and the location name "Bosque village".

 

In the evening, we did end up getting into the hot spring. The cold and hot streams merge together, forming a hot bath of perfect temperature.  Since everyone's concept of ideal is different, you can move further or closer along the stream, thereby adjusting the water temperature. The thing is, the hot water gushes from the side and from above, and the cold water comes from the campsite. Also, true, the soil is scorching hot to the touch if you dig a little.

About 30-50 people are relaxing in the spring, all concentrated in a narrow strip of about 10 meters where the water temperature is most comfortable. Let me remind you, it's 12-14 degrees outside with wind, meaning it's pretty damn freezing. And after all, you have to climb out of the spring and run through the cold to the showers about a hundred meters away. Most people get dressed, but I somehow managed without. The shower, by the way, is paid, but at first we didn't realize it requires five 100-krona coins; as a result, we fed it 400 krona in separate coins, achieved nothing, and I washed under ice-cold (literally) water. How I didn't get sick, everyone is amazed. The only way to answer this is with the boring and clichéd phrase about the body's incredible powers activating in extreme conditions, which explains nothing.

There's also a store here called Mountain Mall, it even has a website. The prices there are creepy, a can of beans costs about 2 lats, if not more. A little cube of butter or jam is 50 santims. Gas for the burner is about 8 lats, I think. We didn't buy enough gas in Reykjavik, because Andrey went to the store and didn't know how much we needed. I was trying to talk him into buying it here now, but he decided that risking eating raw groats in cold water is more fun. Well, I don't mind, it's a life experience too. As Buddhists teach at lectures: there are no bad impressions or events, there is only experience, and it's all interesting.

In this paradigm, the fact that we brought insufficient warm clothing and too thin sleeping bags doesn't even seem unpleasant. Ultimately, at night we wrapped ourselves in all the rags we found in our bags, pulled our sleeping bags over top, zipped the tent tighter, but it still turned out like it did for our already familiar Bjartur from Halldór Laxness's book "Independent People".

In the cave on the small stones lay a large flat boulder, which had long served as a resting place for travelers. Bjartur shoved a bundle of provisions under his head and lay down to sleep. He was the only traveler who had visited this cave in the autumn for many years. Bjartur managed to sleep in any weather on a rock without any harm to his health. He liked this place very much. After sleeping for a while, he woke up. He was shivering. This chill always went through him in the cave, but it wasn't scary: Bjartur knew how to get rid of it. You had to get up, grab the boulder with both hands and turn it until you warmed up. During the night, he had to get up three times and turn the rock eighteen times. Anywhere else this would be considered a great inconvenience, for the boulder weighed no less than fifty pounds, but to Bjartur it seemed the most natural thing in the world to turn a boulder fifty-four times during one night; he liked moving big stones in general. The chill was lifted as if by hand, he lay down and fell asleep again with the bundle of provisions under his head. Waking up for the fourth time, he felt rested and cheerful — at this time it was usually starting to get light — and immediately set off into the mountains, searching all the gorges, and then, having warmed up from walking, sat on a rock and ate blood sausage.

Just like that, we too kept waking up from the cold during the night, tossing and turning on the spot, warming up our chilled muscles, and then drifting back to sleep.  Fortunately, when you drag yourself and the bikes off-road in the fresh air all day, it's no trouble at all. I slept in a bandana and a beanie, otherwise it would've been a total disaster. I must say, this was probably the first day when no particular craziness happened to us, except for that very cold I described. Even with the rains we got lucky: they fell hesitantly, intermittently, and weren't pouring on the tourists too diligently; apparently, the local Perun was already tired of straining himself over these past days.

I hope from my pixel spots on your monitor it's clear that Landmannalaugar left us with mixed impressions. Nevertheless, we wanted to walk around the hills and dales, to find out what else alluring and mind-blowing is here. We were keeping to our time schedule (though not perfectly), and so we decided to stay for one more day, which I will write about next time.

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