We came to Iceland in the ambitious attempt of crossing the island on nordic skis. Traversing the highlands – an uninhabitable volcanic desert – in midst winter. A place that even during the summer months can only be accessed by special vehicles, since there leads no paved road nor bridge.
We started our journey in a glacial valley, Garðsárdalur, delimited on the East and the West by steep mountain slopes that climb up to the altitude of the highlands. Following this valley to the South, towards the source of the river that divides it, we would reach an accessible pass to the highlands. The landscape was treeless, the ground covered in stones of all sizes mostly coated in moss. Some small bushes and tufts of grass created a bumpy surface. All this covered in a thin layer of fresh snow, that had fallen in the previous days.
The conditions weren’t too favorable at the start. It was really windy, in fact our tent poles bent during the first night. Furthermore, the terrain was rough and stony, without any path to follow. The snow, that usually flattens all type of ground in winter, was almost entirely absent drastically increasing the friction of our pulks – the sleds we used to carry our equipment – on the ground. We have been told, that we encountered the warmest winter since the beginning of weather records. Little creeks that supplied the river down the valley with water lay in our way. It was time consuming to cross them since over the years, they created deep trenches by flushing away the soil. We struggled to proceeded and advanced much slower than anticipated. Also, being near the Arctic Circle, caused the disadvantage, that in this season we had only few hours of daylight to seize for walking.
As we continued things seemed to be changing for a better. After the second night, there was no wind and it snowed enough to permit us to put on our skis for the first time. As we woke up, the birds were singing. We skied along the flat shore of the river we were following upstream, allowing us to cover a greater distance with ease. That evening we celebrated New Year’s Eve with hot tea, a chocolate bar and the glimpse of a dim aurora. At that point we weren’t expecting it to be the calm before the storm.
As we started the next morning – our goal for the day was to reach the highland – the terrain slowly started getting steeper. We had to procced along the river, that had decreased significantly in size since we were now near its source. Using snow bridges eventually we had to cross from one bank of the creek to the other several times.
Meanwhile, the wind rose and was getting stronger. It lifted the powdery snow up in the air reducing the visibility noticeably – from time to time we couldn’t see further than the tips of our skis. We were forced to put on our ski-goggles to protect our eyes from the flying particles. The constant howling made it difficult to communicate. Even when standing right next to each other we had to shout to make sure that our words wouldn’t just be carried away by the wind before arriving at the receiver. Suddenly, a gust of wind lifted one of our pulks blowing it away for several meters upon some stone nearby. Considering that we started our trip just several days earlier we still had most of our food and fuel supplies in our sleds, making our pulks 35-40 kg heavy! This was no isolated event. The pulks got tipped over and over by the wind. It impeded our movements and turning over the pulks costed us time and force every single time. We barely proceeded under this conditions.
At about 4 p.m. there was no sign the wind would have stopped anytime soon. In contrary, it was getting stronger and the sun slowly started to sink below the horizon. At this point we realized we had to search shelter for the night. It was already too late and we had walked too far to return safely to the emergency hut we passed on the way. Furthermore, our tent was no match for the wind. Without enough snow to build a snow-wall the exposed tent would not have endured for long.
