Friday, July 23
As the bard said, “there’s no success like failure”…and we failed successfully today. Our goal was to drive deep into the Icelandic highlands in our little 4WD vehicle, traversing more than 40 miles of rutted, rocky, potholed dirt road, arriving at the Kerlingarfjöll Mountain Resort in order to hike to and around the Hveradalir geothermal area, set amid amazingly colorful rhyolite mountains. That was our goal. Just to whet your appetite, here’s a picture taken by someone else of the geothermal area.
We woke to rain, harder than yesterday, and set out after breakfast hoping for the best. The road runs northeast for about 25 miles before turning to dirt. The first miles on the dirt road are green, with blue lupine covering the hills. And the road itself wasn’t so bad: lots of washboarding, so that we were shaken and stirred, but doable.
But the landscape soon turns into something that can only be described as lunar.
Barren, trackless, and desolate for miles around, this part of the interior has a feeling of total remoteness. The land is littered with huge boulders, some as big as houses, erratics left behind as the nearby glaciers receded. Even in the rain, the barren vistas seemed to stretch out to infinity, broken only by distant glaciers, mountains, and volcanos. We were awestruck and, yes, a little on edge.
A bit further along, just as the road turned truly awful, the first large mountain range loomed up on our right.
After we crossed the end of an enormous lake, we began to get views into the multi-hued mountains around Kerlingarfjöll.
In the foreground is a braided river; we’ve already seen a number of these flowing down from glaciers. The colored hills behind them are covered with rhyolite, a type of lava that is particularly susceptible to being worked by mineral effects produced in geothermal areas.
The further north we drove, the worse the road got: not just the washboarding we’d had since the beginning, but long stretches with huge rocks, deep holes, and no shoulder.
We eventually turned off the “main road” and into the Kerlingarfjöll region itself—a land of rushing waters.
After a rough but thrilling ride, we arrived at the little enclave that calls itself a mountain resort (this and any other picture you see here that shows clear skies is not ours).
After speaking with a very nice lady in the main building, we decided to drive up to the geothermal area rather than try the hike. The hike was only about three or four miles each way, but the weather seemed to be turning for the worse and there was a real danger of getting whited out on what were described as rather sketchy paths, sometimes over snow fields, before we reached our destination.
So we made what we thought was a wise decision and headed very slowly up a precipitous road that made the road into the area look like an interstate: rocks, deep gashes, total washouts slowed our way. But we made it to the high point of the road, very close to the geothermal area…and the heavens let loose like they meant it. It wasn’t finally either the torrential rain or howling wind that put us off—even Sue admitted that my gear geekery had us well prepared for the conditions—but the fact that we actually were whited out, with dense fog added to the mix. Visibility ran to perhaps 25 yards. We tried to wait it out, but things only got worse. So back down we went…a failure.
But who was going to let appalling conditions stop us from walking? When we got down to the resort, it had cleared (momentarily, as it turned out), so we suited up. The moment we stepped out of the car, though, the rain and wind let loose, with rain driven horizontally into our faces as we walked. You can see the start of the trail across the river to the left in this picture from a calmer day.
The trail ran alongside a raging river; we followed it for about a mile upstream as it climbed ever higher underneath a series of ledges.
But the water was gradually washing out the more exposed parts of the path as they traversed scree slopes above the river, so that our footing was often treacherous. So here too the intrepid explorers were turned back.
The ride back was quite a bit quicker than the ride in. The drive up to the high point above the resort had alerted me to the comparatively fine condition of the main road, and we flew along, potholes, tires, and suspension be damned.
Yes, we would have loved to spend a few hours hiking in Hveradalir. But we have no regrets. We were exposed to some of the most remarkable terrain that we’ve ever seen. And the journey was itself the adventure.
Tomorrow is another day, and we plan to head into the highlands once again….