^That’s the visitor info/ticket office building on the right.. isn’t it cute?

^ I think perhaps this is where the boats would’ve gone from..

It was all very quiet.. barely anyone else around. You could HEAR the icebergs sometimes! They clicked as they touched each other.

Or.. it could be your idiot friend trying to hurl giant ice blocks into the lagoon:

Or trying to use one as a headpiece

We are all idiots really..

^ I – C – E ???

And then I lost my iPhone…

I only realised my phone was missing when we were getting in the car. You know that momentary PANICKY feeling you get when you’ve just realised something’s missing?? I hate that!

I ran back and had to comb the whole shoreline looking for it.. hoping that it’d be there. Trying to find a WHITE iPhone at a glacier lagoon full of.. ice. Great. Eventually, to my BIG relief, I did find it. Lying there all wet and cold.. because us dumbos were too busy playing a game of ‘see who can throw stones onto the icebergs and have one land there without slipping into the water’.

In our defence it was a really fun game. I didn’t realise how BOUNCY ice was. The stones would bounce and skip off the icebergs so enthusiastically. Obviously I had thrown one so vigorously (excited haha) that my phone fell out..

It’s so funny because in the photo above, you can see my phone lying next to me on the ground as I made another throw -_-

‘Til next post! 😉

The post Iceland Day 4 – Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon in Winter appeared first on SMALLCRAZY.

While he was up there, we were trying to descend a steep slope to meet him at the bottom of the wall. That was quite challenging and a bit scary.

Jayna (in purple/blue) decided she would try to move down slowly on her bum.

Meanwhile, Óskar had finished prepping and was coming down the wall.

I’m not sure what we were doing here, but I’m guessing we were talking about.. the wall. Haha!

Another shot of the steep slope we had to walk on earlier.

One of the other girls in our hiking group went first. I think she only made if a third of the way up before giving up and asking to be lowered back to the ground.

I decided that I would go second, so I could show her how it’s done. I’d never ice-climbed before but I mean.. how hard can it be really. It’s just kicking into ice and like.. walking up!

It turns out, it was BLOODY FREAKING HARD. After a (short) while, my arms were all wobbly.

Those ice picks are HEAVY! You should’ve seen me pathetically knocking them against the ice trying to get a grip.

But.. no matter. I made it to the top in the end!! Only two people in our group – Jason and I – managed to ice-climb to the top. I was proud of myself! Although.. there was never any doubt in my mind that I would make it ;p

My toes were completely battered and bruised after that. You need so much force to get the spikes to really dig in so they can hold your weight!  It was almost like torture.

After this experience, I put ‘ice-climbing’ into my mental list of ‘things only super strong and talented people do’.

I hope Óskar was proud of me… haha

He was such a great guide.. really friendly, informative, and most importantly.. FUNNY 😉

I’m going to overwhelm you with (beautiful) photos I took next to the ice wall now:

Everyone was knackered after their own attempts at ice climbing.. they were also all in awe of the beautiful sunset upon us and were all geekily snapping a bazillion photos per second..

..while I behaved like a moron.

Double Rainbow

How fortunate were we that day, because not only did the sun show itself after the rain, but nature produced for us a DOUBLE RAINBOW! It was difficult to capture on my camera.. but if you look carefully you can spot it!

I was really happy 🙂

Rainbows seemed to be a common sight in Iceland.. !

Zorro and I.. we were left to wander about for a bit on a large plain of glaciery ice. I felt like my parents had left me alone in a playground. So much fun! I kept breathing in deeply so as to try to ‘take in the SMELL’ of the day.

There were a few crevasses to cross over on the way back to the car park.. and yes, danger excites me.
I tried lean over as far as I could manage to get the best view of ‘what’s down there’. Well. There’s nothing down there. It’s all blackness. Reality disappoints.

See.. I took a photo to show you.. I even kicked some ice in for effect! Haha.

Look at the beautiful patterns on the shiny ice! When staring at it in real life it was almost like an optical illusion. At times, I found that my eyes lost focus and I was staring beyond it. It made me feel rather
wonky.

We had gotten so used to – and in my case, a little emotionally attached – to our crampons that when we had to remove them, walking suddenly seemed so.. WEIRD. I guess it’s the same weirdness you feel when you walk in normal shoes after rollerblading/ice skating/skiing etc 😉

It was such an amazingly fun day.. I loved it so much. Recollecting it now, I really miss walking crunchily on that ice. If you’re ever in Iceland, you simply HAVE to try glacier hiking!

As mentioned before, I booked the glacier hike tour via Arctic Adventures and it costs ISK21,990 per person. That’s roughly.. USD170.

The post Iceland Day 3 – Ice Climbing on Sólheimajökull Glacier appeared first on SMALLCRAZY.

Sólheimajökull is an outlet glacier on Katla, a large, very active volcano in southern Iceland. They say that the last violent eruption from Katla was 95 years ago but that there were probably a couple of eruptions more recently that didn’t manage to break the thick ice cover – these are called subglacial eruptions. The famous Eyjafjallajökull volcano that caused the giant ash cloud in 2010 is smaller than Katla.

What really fascinates me is that Eyjafjallajökull has had three recorded eruptions in the last 1000 years, and each one was followed by a Katla eruption! True to tradition, apparently Katla had a small eruption in 2011, producing a subglacial meltwater flood that destroyed a road bridge along the Ring Road.

Can you tell that volcanoes excite me?
[read about my experience climbing a volcano and watching it erupt]

I booked the five of us onto a 3-4 hour hiking tour of Sólheimajökull Glacier (called Blue Ice) via Arctic Adventures for about ISK22,000 per person. That’s about 125 Euros or 170 USD. Yes, Iceland can be rather pricey! The price includes transfers from Reykjavik, but since we had our own car (thanks SADcars!) and were staying nearby, we didn’t need it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean you get to pay less.

I did contemplate doing the hike on Vatnajökull at Skaftafell National Park instead (it’s the largest glacial mass in the whole of Europe), but thought against it as it’s much farther east and didn’t fit in with my winter driving itinerary very well. It was tough trying to do so many things in only 7-8 days!

The meeting time was 11.20am at the foot of the glacial tongue. It’s about 5 minutes in through a gravelly path after you turn off the main road (Ring Road). After a delicious breakfast of smoked lamb (hangikjöt), bread, cereal etc, we set off early enough to stop and take some pictures in the barren-land beauty. But too bad it was so cloudy that morning that most of the photos turned out rubbish!

I actually have a video of the drive (before turning off the main road):

We ended up being the first to arrive at the meeting point, but within minutes of waiting, other participants started turning up and so did our guide, Óskar (seen in orange above).

Each person was provided with a harness, a helmet, crampons, and an ice pick. The crampons are fitted to your shoes on the ground before the hike begins, from which time you’ll have to carry them with your hands until you reach the ice.

I was already having the time of my life just holding that ice pick. I’d never held one before.

^^ in the far distance beyond the white in this photo is where our car was parked, a.k.a the starting point. The water you see is a glacial lake formed by the retreating ice due to climate change.

Before we reached the ice, Óskar had everyone stop to put on their crampons, following his instructions. I remember it started to RAIN as we sat down but instead of dampening my spirits, it made me even more excited because I could SMELL the adventure!

My backpack was drenched and I had to stuff my camera into my jacket. But I snuck a photo anyhow.

We were given advice on how to walk confidently with the crampons and how to put the ice pick down without it slipping and sliding away. I thought it was really fun to stamp your foot down to get a good grip with each step.

Once I got used to it, I sped ahead of the group and trailed Óskar. I like to be in front. ;p

Óskar gave us some interesting pieces of information about the glacier – how it’s formed, the surrounding volcanoes, etc.

In the video below, he talks about British school children coming to Iceland and doing all sorts of excursions.

Yes I admit.. I wasn’t paying attention for a while >.<

I often had one glove off…. so I could use my iPhone to snap some pics. HMM.

Óskar led us to a small stream of glacial water flowing through the ice. We were encouraged to lean in and have a taste.. which of COURSE I did (and enjoyed). Jason did one better and ice-picked a piece of ice and crunched away.

Apparently the ‘blue ice’ taste the best since they’re more pure in the sense that they have no air bubbles trapped inside.

Now I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Yes I HAD to do a jump when walking on a glacier with crampons on! 😉

I love this photo of Jason being a goon.

^^My flutterpony and Linda’s Icelandic Puffin (she had bought it at the tourist centre in Geysir).

I loved the sound of the metal cleats digging into the ice with each step I took. This was my second time visiting a glacier, the first being the Pasterze Glacier in Austria, but I’d never got to use crampons before. I loved running on the ice with them! It was especially fun when the terrain was uneven or when you had to cross over crevasses.

NEXT UP: More Sólheimajökull – Ice Climbing and a Double Rainbow

*For more Iceland posts, please see my Travel Log*

The post Iceland Day 3 – Sólheimajökull Glacier Hike appeared first on SMALLCRAZY.