Iceland Day 7 June 30, 2017

Today's wild & crazy adventure encompassed just about everything I was expecting Iceland to be and came prepared for.  We ventured into Thorsmork named after Thor the Norse God.  In today's day and age Thor is the God of Thunder.  We followed the trail that would take us up to Fimmvorduhals.  This sits between two newly formed mountains from the volcano that erupted in 2010 and caused such a havoc for all the airlines and travellers.  A thought crossed my mind, in the scheme of things 2017 seems early to be heading up into that terrain.  I think Thor was watching us and delivered everything extreme except thunder and an eruption.  Looking at our bus for the day in hindsight tells our story.

As I wake each morning I get excited for what the day will bring.  I felt a little extra of that this morning.  I geared up, got out the door, waited at my pickup point, and along comes my ride.  Lisa was the driver and guide.  She was pretty & petite, muscled & tattooed and driving this machine-like mini bus.  She warned/advised us what to expect for the drive with extra enfaces on the last hour.  The "F Road" on the Landmannalaugar adventure was mild compared to this beast of an "F Road".  

After ninety minutes of driving from the city to the F Road and then sixty minutes on it, we arrived out in the middle of a place that's looking like something I have never seen before.  It's overcast, there's a slight drizzle and it is the greenest of greens.

The climb starts right from our ride and in a matter of minutes the views begin. It's a dirt narrow trail, with little rugged sections to climb up through.  It's fun and so different. 

We all know there are elves in Iceland.  They live in areas like this.  This is one of their benches.  There were a few of these benches along the trail.

We climbed higher and higher.  It got greener and crazier.  We hiked over the Cat's Spine (a rocky foot wide exposed don't look down kind of trail) and up the Devil's Comb (dirt foot wide slanted exposed trail with a rope to assist with getting through and up this section).  

We came out onto what Lisa called a heath.  It was flat and wide and went on forever.  I could see hints of mountains off in the distance.  We kept our heads down 

and battled the wild, the cold, the rain and the snow.

Getting to this point seemed like an  accomplishment but we had more climbing ahead of us up the snow slopes to another flat snow covered section where you could see lava sticking up out of the snow.  This lava came from the 2010 volcano eruption.  It formed two new mountains which we were in between.  I could slightly see them through the snow and cloud.  Our destination was to this wall of lava.  

We spent a little time here before beginning our trek back through the snow with two long slopes to glissade down.  Then back to the heath then the green.  The Devil's Comb was easier to come down but the Cat's Spine was still sketchy.

We arrived back at our ride and prepared for the adventure back to civilization.  When we made it back onto the main highway I relaxed, closed my eyes and relived the day.  I wanted to make sure I remembered every little thing about this wild and crazy and beautiful part of Iceland.