I Am a Polar Bear

This is pretty much word for word my diary from the Laugavegur trail. It turns out it’s occasionally quite difficult to read my writing.

Plans changed before they even started. Heavy snow at Hrafntinnusker meant we couldn’t camp there. Day 1 therefore was to be at Landmannalaugar.

I got up at 5.30am to pack my stuff and get ready to go. I’d booked a taxi because getting from Skipholt – Pavi’s special annexe house! – to the pick-up point at Hallgrimskirkja was going to be difficult with a heavy bag. I was there by 6.40, in time for getting picked up at maybe 7am – or maybe 7.15, I wasn’t sure. The bus split the difference but we had to wait until 7.30, until the last person definitely hadn’t turned up, before we could leave.

It was a mix of day-walkers and multi-day walkers. The multi-day people would be walking together and it soon became apparent that the plans, which had changed on Friday, had already changed back. It seemed we’d be walking to Hrafntinnusker after all – but because of the snow, we’d be sleeping in the hut the first night instead of camping. We stopped at Hella for our “comfort break” and the multi-day people handed over our luggage over to the driver who’d be taking it all straight to Hrafntinnusker – Obsidian Peak, if my Icelandic holds up.

The road we were meant to be taking was closed – “it blew away”, to quote Matt, the day-tour leader. It had been open for nine days, which apparently isn’t doing too badly. We took the longer route, which went via hydro power stations and Hrauneyjar – and then the bus broke down. A problem with the gearbox, which apparently everyone on board had noticed while we were still in Reykjavik. We broke down on a bit of higher ground, overlooking a nice green glacial lake and ten or fifteen minutes later, two more Trex buses came along. We decided that the thing to do was offload the day-tour people onto one of them while the multi-day people waited for the bus to be fixed, since we don’t have the same time pressure.

We had lunch on the dead bus while we waited for something to be sent from Landmannalaugar. Francois, our guide, promises many cookies and much chocolate over the next week. (In hindsight, he did indeed keep this promise.).

Eventually, a new bus came along. It was rougher than the first bus – it bumped and growled and was pretty uncomfortable – but least it didn’t bounce.

It was raining at Landmannalaugar when we finally arrived. Francois gave us facility fee bracelets to allow us to use the toilets unchallenged, which we did anyway. We got ourselves dressed and arranged while Francois checked on conditions and then we set off. We were being cautious and not going straight up onto the lava field. Instead we went down Graenagil and climbed up from there. I’d put on all my warm layers and within minutes of setting foot on the lava field, I was overheated and starting to wilt from heat exhaustion. We finally stopped by the solfataras and I stripped. Five minutes later it was snowing and we began climbing very steeply up Brennisteinsalda. Francois had already spotted that I was struggling. He made me put my hat back on and I soon decided I needed my gloves too. Up and up we climbed and at the top, Francois and Jake took some of the weight from my bag. For tomorrow, this journal has to go in the transported luggage. It goes inside the car so it won’t get wet – maybe packing will be easier if all the stuff doesn’t have to go in half-inflated drybags.

We kept climbing and kept getting steeper and the snow kept getting worse. I soon discovered that when I first put my gloves on, they were wet and cold and several times I literally feared for my fingertips. But after a few minutes of using my hiking poles, my fingers began to warm up. Don’t know what I’d have done without them. I used them to shore myself up so many times and help me descend a few things.

I cheered up when we found a flattish path. I began to think about the snow we’d crossed and the blizzard that had been starting and began to giggle at the Lord of the Rings – “the hobbits will perish in this!” “We must take the road through the Mines of Moria…” Actually, I repeated that about three times, to no response at all. Never mind. It was for my own entertainment. And it was every bit as bad as trying to cross Caradhras. Worse. No one was trying to do it in a light velvet-esque tunic or nothing more protective than a cloak, even an Elvish one. We did see a surprising number of people in plastic ponchos, though one or two looked like they might have been made by outdoor experts like 66North. Still, they looked pretty unprotected.

It was over too soon. The flat ended and then we were up on another steep climb. It was steep climb after steep climb. Twice it was a near-vertical wall of snow, into which Francois had to cut steps with his ice axe, although the steps were usually too big for me to manage easily.

We crossed a snow field. The weather was starting to close in – visibility was getting shorter, the snow was getting both heavier and sharper and by now, mostly sideways. Francois gathered us on a patch of gravel and got our his emergency shelter. It’s made for 12 so 13 adults and backpacks made it a very uncomfortable squash. Worst was that I needed a hand on the ground behind me to stay sort-of upright. That ten minutes in the shelter was probably worse for me than anything else we’d done so far. By the time I’d half-crawled half-rolled out of it, collected my stuff and waited for everyone, I was frozen. For a long time I worried seriously about my fingers – I already knew they took time to warm up in wet gloves but this time it didn’t seem to be happening at all. I also passed an entertaining few minutes worrying about my lungs. I was inhaling very cold air and it was making me cough. What if I actually did end up with pneumonia? No. That’s caused by an infection. Yes, but it’s also caused by foreign objects in the lungs, or water, or great big fluffy pieces of airborne snow.

I struggled on. We came to a hot spring, where boiling water bubbled out of the mountainside before running away in a stream that was already cool enough to handle just 2 or 3 metres away. And here was a bird! A little black and white one that later turned out to be a snow bunting.

We went round the hot spring. Down a steep slope and up a wall of snow. I used my very last dregs of energy getting up there. Now we only ha a “long gentle slope” to walk up. 3.5km. That’s only about 2 miles. Visibility worsened. I fell behind. I was cold, I was tired and I felt like I could go no further but I had no other choice. You walk or you die. And gradually exhaustion and breathlessness turned into something that might be called panic.

Francois tried to calm me and get me warm and fed but I couldn’t take off my coat to put something else on. I hadn’t had an insulating layer on for hours, which is why I always got so cold when we stopped. But if I’d been able to take off my waterproof to put something warm underneath, I’d only have overheated and got heat-sick again anyway. And besides, my warm layers were among the weight spread out in other people’s bags and I didn’t know where they were by now. Nor could I eat, even though by now I was getting hungry. In that kind of overstressed state, my throat just locks up and eating becomes impossible. I had two cookies in my pocket but they were wet and soggy and inedible by now. A drink – maybe a drink would help but stopping, taking off the bag – I couldn’t. And so the rest of the went slowly. Francois held very tightly to my arm and I trudged, exhaustedly echoing whatever he said (“not far… not far…”) in a monotonous mutter, stopping every ten or twenty steps. By now we were navigating on the GPS because we couldn’t see pretty much anything in front of us. That disorientation really didn’t help me. I spent a lot of that bit of walk with my eyes closed – it wasn’t as if there was anything around to fall over or walk into and Francois was doing all the steering, although it did make the disorientation worse when I opened my eyes and tried to focus on the line of rocks and the cairn on the horizon. I was all out of positivity, I’d heard “not far now!” too many times. I didn’t have the spoons for anything except trudge-stop-trudge-stop.

Francois said that in Belgium they have a phrase along the lines of not being able to eat an elephant in one go, you have to eat it bit by bit and I tried to repeat that occasionally so he knew I wasn’t dying just yet, which is what he thought. Every time we paused he asked again about how cold and hungry I was and threatened to get out the shelter. But the shelter had already nearly killed me – another stop would absolutely finish me off.

Past the cairn was another slope, a sideways one across the bottom of another mountain – another slope I just couldn’t get up, in deep snow that sapped what little energy I had left. And in the distance, a blinking light on a pole, marking the highest part of the trail. The hut was just behind it. But it was as far away as the cairn had been. “We’re nearly there!” just wasn’t doing it. Francois sent the rest of the group on ahead – go to the light, you can see the hut, go down to the hut. If you can’t see the hut, wait there – but no one went. We continued to trudge and shuffle as a group, all together. And then hut was nearly as far down from the light as the light had been when we’d spied it. Downhill, mercifully, but down a craggy snow-covered lava field, which took almost as much concentration as climbing the ice walls had earlier.

By the time I reached the hut I was utterly done. Other people had to take my bag and coat, undo my clips, take off my boots for me. I didn’t have the strength and the last bit with Francois holding onto me, while it had saved my life, had made me very cold. Really really cold.

My bad was already in our room, although it took me forever to figure out which was our room. I got a towel and some dry clothes and Francois took me upstairs to the overheated wardens’ room where I could get change.

There was a radiator at the end of the beds. There wasn’t really room to sit against it but I squeezed myself in anyway. A lot of my flesh was red – in a very unhealthy, potential deep tissue damage kind of way. From not wearing an insulating layer and getting wet to the skin!

I dragged myself downstairs, wrapped up in my sleeping bag and drank a cup of hot chocolate. My glasses were starting to unmist and clear at last and being able to see properly helped a lot. Dinner was pasta with smoked salmon and cheese. I had pasta with just cheese – out of a metal bowl that looked a lot like a dog bowl.

The salmon pasta came in an actual cauldron, stirred with the biggest wooden spoon outside of a witch’s cottage. And of course, there was endless coffee and hot chocolate. After dinner I made myself comfortable and warm on the bed I’ dumped my bags on. We’d have to rearrange later – for the twelve of us, we had 4 single bunk beds accessed only by an overgrown staple as the only step up, and four double beds at the bottom. I didn’t fancy sharing but I was in no condition to climb up either. In the end it sorted itself out. There was abundant space in the long room upstairs and four people moved up there. I got my double bed to myself!

The rest of the group learned/taught/played cribbage and eventually I think I more or less fell asleep, using the sleeping bag as a blanket and a drybag full of clothes as a pillow.

It verged on hot in there. We had the windows open and most of the people with an open window next to them close it during the night, especially when the wind howled – and how it howled! When the mist lifted in the morning, we discovered there was virtually an iceberg outside our window. We were up at 8am but most people had already got up, wandered around, started getting dressed etc long before that. It was impossible to tell whether it was 2am or 8am.

Day two: Hrafntinnusker to Alftavatn

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