Trek to Alftavatn Lake 03 Aug 2022

 03 Aug 2022

View from our Landmannalaugar Hut.

Hjalti (our great guide) & Stephanie (our great trip planner).

View of our base camp for the first night of our Epic Trek!

Up we go, looking back at base camp.

This is the longest day of hiking for us. (15 miles)

Svetlana doing her thing as we get going. We are still fresh here.

Heading into a geothermal area. So cool!

A fun video of what we experienced!

The color of the streams of hot water.

Boiling water as it comes out of the ground. 100 degrees C

Coming through the steam! Super Cool!

Karen & Hjalti

Snack in the geothermal area. Hjalti is telling us great stuff!

Somewhere along the trail, Hjalti telling us stories.

Hjalti was very informative and interesting to listen to.

Gnome! 

Check out the view. We've gone 5.5 miles or 9 km at this point. Another 10 miles to go. Life is great! So glad it's not raining. We had good weather for this trek.

We had all kinds of terrain on this hike. A monument to a hiker who got caught in a snow storm and didn't make it. He was within a mile or so of a hut/shelter. Mother Nature is so strong and unyielding at times.

Marilee, Karen and Dixie. 

The green hut you see to the left is where we lunch!

This is one of the smaller crossings we had.

Marilee crossing our final river before our destination.

Just for the record, it's still a bit of a trek to the hut.

Dixie crossing. Hjalti keeping watch. Stephanie recording everyone.

Oh what a fun adventure!

Everyone is across safely.

Marilee wanted to drink from the stream. Oh it's so fun!

We are so close to being done our 15 miles, it's time for a fun group photo, let's take a picture of our shadow!

This is what we made! What a great group!

Alftavatn Lake!

We made it! This 15 mile trek was a lot of steep up's and steep down's. I say Bear's Hump X 10. The guide says we had a descent of 2952 ft. Our group took about 8 - 9 hours to complete this trip.

We were squished up in our hut, and very grateful for supper. It was a long strenuous day, but oh so interesting, informative and fun!

(This is Marilee's photo, she knows how to capture a moment!)

Mount Blahnukur (Blue Peak) 02 Aug 2022

 Part II of August 2nd

After getting settled for the night it was time for a "jaunt" up Blue Peak to see what we are made of. Does the flat area look a long way off? It is!!

Our group photo while still somewhat fresh. Loural on the left, Lorna, Sharon, Dixie, Linda, Lani, Carol, Doreen, Karen, Jim.

Look way up! That is where we are going. One of the thoughts in my head at this moment is: "What exactly have I got myself into?"

Here is some information on this mountain. 

Bláhnjúkur is a volcano in the south of Iceland. Its height is 940 m. Its name translates to blue peak in English. This comes from the blue-black colour of its sides. The colour is due to volcanic ash and lava flows. The mountain is situated in Landmannalaugar, a natural park near Hekla. Wikipedia

Oh just a way to go yet!

I'm getting there. Oh it is vast and beautiful!

Lorna and Dixie. Such a great view!

We made it to the top.

So blessed to be able to do this!

The colorful Rhyolite Mountains.

Coming down.

A pano to get an idea of what we were seeing.

Hjalti (Yelti) showing us the best place to cross.

We did a lot of water crossings on this hike.

Just a fun photo of our guide and the group enjoying themselves.

This was basically a 4 mile loop with an elevation gain of 1050ft.

Trip to Landmannalaugar 02 August 2022

 

02 August 2022

    

Packing up for our 6 day hiking tour. We were able to leave what we didn't need for the hike at the hostel, it was a job to figure all that out and not carry too much. Marilee working on her pack.

 

 Lorna packing her bags. This was our room in Reykjavik. We had Lorna on the bottom left, Doreen above her, Dixie on the bottom and Marilee on the top on the right hand side. We had a great group!

On the road for the next 3-4 hours. The speed limit is 90km/hr.

Some of the landscape as we drove to our first hut.

View of the type of roads we took. No pavement and room for one vehicle at a time.

A pit stop on the way to our hut. We climbed up to the ridge.

Tall/Short! A guy from Croatia that was on our bus. It's so fun to travel and meet such interesting folk! The lake is what was on the other side of the ridge.

Short/Short! Lorna and Dixie Dee!

Windy but oh so interesting!

One of our first pictures as a group! There was 15 of us!

Look closely you can see Hjalti (Yelti) our guide at the very back kinda centre.

Marilee taking a selfie! Linda working on the next photo!

Linda likes her Mountain Dew! 

Linda is one of the oldest hikers on our trip!

A rock star in my books.

Sheep that we saw on our way out to the first hut. In the summer the sheep are let out to graze where ever they can find grass and then gathered up in the fall. "SHEEP!"

First of many water crossings that we did while in Iceland. We are all but arrived to Landmannalaugar. Oh it is EXCITING!

Tent city. A lot of people are here doing this hike. We just are not tenting, which I think is a good thing.

This is our hut. This rooms sleeps 16, we have Svetlana who joined our group. She was great fun. Eight "hot dogs" on each side of the room. It was a good thing we had earplugs and masks to sleep.