Day 3

The theme of our third day is probably best described as ‘breathtaking’ in every aspect of the word.
We had a look at the map of the canyons surrounding the campsite, located in between the glaciers of Eyjafjalljökull, the volcano that erupted in 2010 and paralyzed half of the northern hemisphere with its ashes, and Katla, the mega volcano that is always expected to erupt shortly after Eyjafjalljökull (but still hasn’t yet). We were shown the hiking trail through the canyons and I clearly got both the scale of the map and the estimate of the terrain wrong, because it looked like a 1.5 – 2 hour hike, but 7 hours of what mostly resembled mountaineering later, I knew better.
The campsite was next to the river close to sea level, so we started with a steep climb a few hundred meters up and despite all my training in the months leading up to this trip it was tough as well as kind of scary at parts. At one point the path went over a very narrow ridge with steep drops of a few hundred meters to both sides. It scared the hell out of me, but as it ‘only’ was a stretch of about 10 meters, I figured I would suck it up, focus on where I wanted to go (and not on where I did not want to go) and take my chances. Once at the top the view of the canyons, glaciers and volcanos turned out to be stunning (I still not feel completely comfortable saying that the view was worth it, which has more to do with how scared I’ve been at times than with the stunning view itself).
After lunch we had the choice to climb further to a glacier of Eyjafjalljökull or go back. The climb ahead seemed again pretty tough and since I felt I had challenged myself enough Willem went that part alone with some group members and I went back with the other part of the group. I did not go back the way we came as I knew how scary that part was, so I continued the trail as indicated, not knowing the worst was yet to come. It started with a very steep decline on loose sand and small rocks followed by a few hours on a narrow trail with some difficult steps across small gaps and waterfalls next to very deep and very steep drops. Especially when fatigue set in and I started to trip over silly small stones I got worried and scared, thinking that I did not pay this much money on a trip that would get me killed falling down a fucking rock in Iceland. And yes, the views were still spectacular, but (as the voice in my head reminded me) they were views from the top of a canyon in a geographically very unstable area with disaster already being long overdue. So I was scared shitless and my brain was going crazy, when one of our group members started to become very vocal about her fears. I was fighting my own demons and since I knew we were not going to be able to help each other and since I really just wanted to get the hell down, I just walked on. Interestingly, although my skin tends to blister like paint in a hot stream of air, I returned with only one single blister on my heel. As it turns out this would be the only one worth mentioning throughout the entire trip, but it did have the nasty habit of getting back at me regularly.
Throughout the ‘hike’ I did feel lucky that it had not been raining at all that day and that the surface of Iceland generally provides very good and stable grip. In fact, the soles of my shoes gripped better to this surface than to my shoes, but more about that later. Additionally I was glad we were not on a clock in terms of darkness falling, as the sun would set behind the mountains only around 10 pm and throughout the night it would never get completely dark. This meant not only that I could take my time, but also that Willem and the group that did the extra stretch and had no clue about what they were up against after an exhausting additional climb, had some extra time. It turned out however that all my worries for their sake had been somewhat wasted, since they arrived at the camp looking quite relaxed literally only about 15 minutes after I did. According to them the extra part was much less strenuous then the final part of the trail. Together we then relaxed and enjoyed one of those over-priced beers, but when I went to bed later that night and closed my eyes, the first thing I saw was a dizzying abyss making my body freeze completely.