Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

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Iceland — 19, Day 9 — Glacier

2012-10-07

In the morning, it turned out that the stove, which hadn't been working yesterday, had suddenly fixed itself for reasons unknown to science. Either a German or an Austrian picked it up, cradled it a bit, and it hissed with a blue flame. Machinery, you know, it likes affection. At least, that's what a 17-year-old girl once taught me. I've gotten smarter since then, and I won't yell "that's just idiotic" anymore; instead, I'll look affectionately and point out that men actually absolutely adore affection and tenderness, and reciprocate them, so it's much more useful to waste your charm on living creatures than on mechanisms.

We had barely left the gloomy Hvanngil campsite when another disaster struck. Andrey was walking along the trekking trail and rubbed his tire against a rock, creating a nasty gaping hole. This proved once again that bringing a spare tire to Iceland is highly advisable, even though it weighs a ton. I was lugging one around, but we decided not to put it on, because Andrey's tire was torn on the side, and he could keep going after just replacing the inner tube. We decided to save the spare tire for an absolute emergency, when push really comes to shove.

Two tourists with large backpacks are walking along a narrow trail through a barren black volcanic field. Along the trail, there are green wooden signs with route names, and in the distance, hills and mountains are visible under a gloomy sky.

Iceland Cycling - day 9


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A man in a jacket and glasses inspects a bicycle inner tube in the middle of a rocky, hilly landscape. Nearby on the ground lies a detached wheel and a bicycle with attached camping gear.

Inner tube replacement in progress

Close-up of a heavily worn bicycle tire with a large tear in the tread, held by a hand. A blurred rocky mountain landscape is visible in the background.

Here's the gaping hole

Panoramic landscape with a dark rocky plain in the foreground, gently sloping green mountains in the distance, where a group of tourists is visible on the slope, and a blue sky with white clouds.

On the left slope, a chain of little ant-people

Wide landscape with a dark, rocky plain dotted with sparse vegetation in the foreground. On the horizon, green mountains with snowy patches and a massive white glacier are visible under an overcast sky with clearings.

And on the horizon, the Mýrdalsjökull glacier is already glowing with an unearthly light

Height 1493 meters, area 595 km2., inside is the Katla volcano, erupts every 40-80 years.

A bicycle tourist guides a bike up the steps of a makeshift wooden bridge crossing a rocky landscape covered in green moss. A second bicycle stands nearby, and mountains are visible on the horizon under a cloudy blue sky.

Assaulting a bridge again

A wooden pedestrian bridge crosses a fast-flowing river with rapids, running through a rocky landscape overgrown with moss. Mountains are visible in the background under a partly cloudy sky.

A funny structure

Vast volcanic landscape with dark rocky ground in the foreground. In the midground, moss-covered green mountains with patches of snow are visible, and in the distance — snow-capped peaks under a cloudy sky with patches of blue.A turbulent, muddy river flows through a rocky volcanic landscape with steep banks, on one of which several people are sitting. In the distance, dark mountains and snow-capped peaks are visible under a cloudy sky.

Rocky volcanic plain with dark hills in the foreground and snow-capped mountains on the horizon under a blue sky with white clouds.

Almost all day the horizon was obscured by the fairy-tale view of the snowy mountains of the two glaciers

Serene misty river landscape at sunrise or sunset, with a low sun reflecting in the water, and silhouettes of trees along the bank, as well as a bridge in the distance.

The road is well-trodden, but in places it's rocky enough to rattle you

A deserted dirt road made of dark gravel passes through a rugged mountain landscape. In the center rises a pointed rock with green slopes, and snow-capped peaks are visible on the horizon under a bright cloudy sky.

It was our last day in the wild, and I was already getting a little nostalgic

A winding dirt road descends down a hill to a spacious valley with dark soil and a river. In the background, gently sloping green hills and snow-capped mountain ranges rise under a cloudy sky.

I don't know how visible it is here, but over the course of the day we descended from an altitude of six hundred meters, and the total drop (if you count the alternating ascents and descents) amounted to a whole kilometer. It's actually quite thrilling to bomb downhill at breakneck speed on a heavy (though not quite as heavy anymore) two-wheeled steed, trying to hold onto a bucking handlebar on the edge of a precipice, and hoping that the Taiwanese aluminum factories followed the Swiss-American specifications to the letter, and the thin hydroformed frame will withstand the thick Icelandic boulders.

Wide landscape: snow-capped mountains on the horizon, in front of them — a vast green valley with a winding river, illuminated by sunbeams through an overcast sky.

Panoramic view of snow-capped mountains above a dark field, illuminated through a variable sky with blue clearings and massive grey clouds.

The clouds were racing at a mind-boggling speed

Rocky landscape in the rain: a winding rocky trail leads along a long ridge of cliffs, and snow-capped mountains in the haze are visible on the horizon.

As you can see, the precipitation didn't disappoint — we got soaked to the bone

Fortunately, it was warm, and therefore the downpour didn't cause us much trouble, except that putting on waterproof pants is a chore. It rains quite often here, 10 meters of precipitation a year. For comparison, Riga is also considered a gloomy place in this regard, but it only gets about 6 meters a year. It's funny that the clouds were chasing us the whole way, but after this single instance, they couldn't catch up to us. As you've probably figured out, if the clouds were chasing us, the wind was blowing in our backs, thanks to which we covered a whopping 70 km in a day, quite a decent distance.

A gravel road goes off into the distance through a grassy area, leading to snow-capped mountains under an overcast sky. On the right rises a dark rock framing the view of distant glacial peaks.

Vast landscape with withered grass in the foreground, a wide riverbed and green hills, behind which majestic snow-capped mountains with glaciers rise under an overcast sky with a glimpse of the sun.

A spacious plain with sparse dry grass in the foreground transitions into green hills and distant mountains with snow-capped peaks under a cloudy sky.

You can tell right away the coast is near — vegetation appeared, and it got warmer

IMG_1619

I hope you're not sick to death of glacier photos yet

Mountain landscape with a wide river flowing along a rocky bed, against the backdrop of dark mountains with a massive glacier on the peaks under a partly cloudy sky.

Because there's nothing else to offer you

Rocky plain strewn with grey pebbles, against the backdrop of a gently sloping mountain ridge with remnants of snow under a cloudy sky.

Soon we reached what you could call a regular highway

It turned out that the map was a bit outdated, and a new road had already been laid in this spot. I made the right decision to follow the reappearing cars rather than the plan, because their wide path looked more reassuring. It turned out that if we had gone with the old option, we would have had to ford an extra river crossing, of god-knows-what nature. If you look at the track, you can see that near the river we didn't ride on Emstruleið, but right alongside it, on a road that isn't even on Google Maps yet. For a cyclist, the surface isn't ideal, but it's tolerable, especially considering we didn't have to roll on it for long.

A wide river flows across a dark plain, breaking into multiple branches with pebble shoals. In the distance, green hills and snow-capped mountain peaks are visible under a blue sky with white clouds.

On the horizon —  the very same famous Eyjafjallajökull that recently screwed over all of Europe

Honestly, there's always a fear, mixed with excitement, that some other ambush is waiting ahead. And if not an eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, then at least the river in the photo. Fortunately, as you could have guessed by the presence of a farm and cars earlier, there was a wide bridge crossing it. It marked the end of the interior part of Iceland for us, with its incredible beauties and cruelties. We celebrated this event with a double portion of canned food, as well as the loss of my turbo lighter.

A person in dark clothing sits on rocky ground, head bowed and clutched in gloved hands. Next to him are a camping gas stove with a pot, a water bottle, and a bowl; the background is brightly lit.

What the hell was that anyway? Andrey asks himself. Still asking, by the way

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