Aharon, me and Brian at the edge of the World
Distance:
16km (10 miles)
Location:
Skaftafell National Park, Southeast Iceland
Difficulty:
Medium
Sights: Glaciers, Fosses, Mountains
The trip
started with a rather easy hike up stair built trails past two waterfalls. One
of these was Sarah’s goal of the entire trip – Svartifoss. (She’s got a thing for basalt.) The trail wove through bushes that were
ALMOST tree-like.
Sarah @ Svarifoss
Once we
crossed out of the “tree-line” there was a long stretch on a rocky plain that
led into the direction of green lichen and moss covered mountains. The rocky plain looked like the set of Red
Sonja. (I was ready to fight Bridgette
Neilson.) As we walked across the plain,
we realized that everyone else we had seen since leaving the camp was NOT going
further.
As we
approached the mountains, The scenery changed from Red Sonja to Lord of the
Rings. I stated that we were going over
the gap between the mountains and down into the valley in front.
Andy
summed up my statement later: “Usually when I go hiking somebody misreads the
contour lines.” That “somebody” was ME
this time.
Mountains ahead that we would climb towards
Hiking map
Instead of going down into the valley in front,
we climbed almost straight up to the Skorabrýr ridge. Atop the ridge we got amazing views of the Skaftafelljöll
as its peaks climbed above the clouds.
And further along we got great views of the main glacier climbing
playing “peak”-a-boo as it crept between the peaks.
Andy at the edge
The end of the Glacier
The
trail then took us along the side of the higher Kristinartindar (1126
meters). A more difficult trail spurred
off of ours to summit “Christina’s peak.”
Brian decided to take it while the others of us took the “easier” trial that
continued along the side and for the next half hour across the Southern face of
the peak.
The
trail brought us to a huge cliff that overlooked Skaftafellsjökull. Here we saw our first other person in a
couple of hours. The Italian we met was
kind enough to take our picture at the point.
Andy, me, Sarah and Aharon
The spot
was also where the difficult trail Brian took rejoined our easier trail we were
on.
Me: “Here
comes Brian”
Italian
guy: “But he is running?”
Sarah: “Yep,
that’s Brian”
Brian
rejoined us and gave the Italian guy a little recon on the difficult
trail: “It’s fine except one point where
you have to hug the cliff. But, it was
probably the most fun thing I have ever done in my life.”
As we
were now at the point where it was just an hour hike back to the campground, I
gave the Italian guy our map and sent him up into the mountains. We hiked along the edge back down.
We knew
we were getting close as the trail went from zero people to passing people
every 2 or 3 minutes. The end took us
down the easier loop trail into the campground.
After 4
hours hiking over waterfalls, across slate cliffs, over a cliff he had to hug
onto and a foot wide ridge to the top of Kristinartindar, it was on this easy
trail with railings and stairs that Brian slipped and almost went down a cliff…
When we
got to the Camp the others were packing and we followed suit – headed for Thakgil.
