We’ve finished the Laugavegur Trail. Now we have two days at Þórsmörk.
Not having to pack up and get the tents down was quite the novelty at Þórsmörk. We didn’t get to start any later, though. The weather was going to stop us getting anywhere near Fimmvörðuháls and Magni and Modi but François still wanted to head up in that direction and see how far we could go. At least, that was Plan A. Plan B was two loops of the woodland around the campsite, with an optional return for lunch but despite two “I don’t care” and one “plan B please” we headed off up the mountain. I’d known since Monday that I was never going to survive this day but I could opt out and retrace my steps at any point and that would have to do.
We set off across the Krossá. This is a deceptively deep and fast river, almost invisible from our campsite. Many vehicles come to grief in its waters and it’s far too dangerous to cross by food. So we hiked across the gravel plain in the direction of the bridge on wheels. The river never fills the valley entirely but it meanders at will and the bridge has to be regularly moved.
The steps up onto this piece of engineering are more like ladders, and tilted at such an angle, and with no handrail, that damsel-in-distress here was quite glad to have a hand up from François. And then, like all Icelandic bridges, in had disconcerting gaps between the planks, a few lightly damaged planks and a very fast and deep grey-brown river rushing underneath. I could quite figure out how the bridge moves. I see the big rubber wheels at each end but it’s far too big to pull by hand and it looks spectacularly awkward for moving with a tractor.
We were now virtually at Básar and had already covered the best part of 1.5km at the sort of a speed a mountaineer thinks is plenty for the pre-hike on the flat bit. I was already sweaty. It had been raining relatively heavily when we set off but now it wasn’t and full waterproofs are very hot.
We headed up the trail and I instantly realised I wasn’t going to be able to do any of it. I had just enough in me for the four day hiking. Jake and Csilla were discussing their plans for driving the Golden Circle on Sunday and I tentatively invited myself along on the grounds that 1) I can navigate 2) I know all the stories 3) I fit nicely in a back seat 4) got to be cheaper split between 3 than 2. Once I’d done that, I could give in and go back to the tent.
The trail was – or should have been – relatively easy, some of it on actual steps. Volunteers carried these tree trunks up the mountain and they’re sturdy enough to not need replacing often, fortunately.
We had a slightly awkward scramble at one point and I took advantage to tell François that I’d be turning back when we reached the viewpoint just above. So we sat there for a while and François told us everything he knew about Þórsmörk. Volunteers come up for six weeks at a time during the summer to help at the campsite and do conservation work, like rebuilding steps and reforesting patches of landslip and hundreds of other jobs. They have to camp and they may survive mostly on adventures.is leftovers. The reasons for Þórsmörk’s peculiar greenness are not merely the approach of summer – the glaciers surrounding it on the north, south and east sides protect it from storms and particularly bad weather and the Krossá river keeps sheep out. Sheep apparently make a bigger difference to Icelandic greenery than anything else in the country. See something green, devour it. Nothing green left. Move on. The reason for the cave-like formations in the mountainside are that Þórsmörk was once under the sea, back in the Ice Age, when the weight of gigantic glaciers pushed the land right down. As the ice melted and the land rose, the sea eroded it into these swirling phreatic formations, although I can’t figure out why airborne weathering hasn’t smoothed the whole thing down since then.
Since I was now descending, François recommended inviting myself into any of the nearby huts to shelter from any rain and climbing the steps up to the troll mountain above Básar where I went in 2012. I took a few minutes to take photos from the viewpoint and then started to head down, taking lots of photos along the way.
It was still early but I was hungry after the early breakfast and the climb so I sat at a picnic table at Básar to eat my bread and cheese and watch tour buses arrive and depart.
I took it a lot slower crossing the plain than François had. The bridge on wheels is surprisingly difficult to climb onto alone because the ladder is angled and there’s no handrail. Instead of route-marching across the gravel I meandered, stopping to take photos of the view and the campsite and to pick up a little piece of rock that looked like it might be raw obsidian, although it’s hard to tell for sure because a lot of rocks go shiny when they’re wet. I met a couple of cyclists coming across – are they doing one or both of the trails? Is it even possible by bike?
Back on the campsite I had the now-traditional 2nd lunch and caught up with my diary. G Adventures came along, went in the shop and lurked at their big plastic tent for lunch – the leader said they were going to cook the sandwiches on the grill back up by the hut but it seemed no one was doing that. One man walked past me and stopped dead at the sight of my journal – this thing is surprisingly coveted considering it’s a notebook and some writing, basically. The day-name stickers are a very easy way to make it look very shiny and creative without actually doing much.
I waited. I took photos. And then I decided it was shower time – real shower time. I went up to the hut and bought three shower tokens from Margrét. Middle of the afternoon, everyone out – no one waiting expectantly outside the shower for me to finish with it.
Fifteen minutes of hot water! I used the first shower to wash my hair, the second to condition it and the third just stand there and get warm. I had to hop out in between to scan the next voucher and it takes a moment for the new water to settle down, even if you don’t touch the taps. If you don’t leap out, the new water will first take your skin off and then freeze you before it goes back to a good comfortable temperature.
I emerged clean and pink and shiny, with such soft hair. Of course, I had to put my dirty clothes back on but for the time being, I at least didn’t put on quite so many layers. I went back to the food tent and was putting some oil in the tips of my hair when a Viking in a brown jumper appeared. This was Germundur, François’ Icelandic friend who lives in Belgium. He was driving for a group one day behind us and had come looking for François. He asked where the rest of the group had gone and whether they were coming down the canyon. No, no one had mentioned any canyon, the plan was just to retrace their steps when they got to the top. He asked about our walk and about Monday and I admitted I’d gone in the car with Eiður on Tuesday. It turns out Eiður really is a good driver. Germundur was planning to drive down from Hraftntinnusker back to the main highway and then up again to Álftavatn but he heard that Eiður had manage to drive directly between them in two and a half hours so he thought he’d brave it after all. However, Eiður is both a very good and a very competitive driver and always wants to be first to drive a difficult route and just because he succeeds doesn’t mean anyone else will. He saw our tracks in the snow at one point but couldn’t follow them. “And do you know how old he is?” I said I’d heard he was only 24. It turns out this is correct and Germundur has known him since he was “just 21”. That’s three years. I know Eiður bought his first 4×4 at 16 and spent a year getting it roadworthy before he could legally drive it at 17. Since it seemed François would still be a while, Germundur left with the intention of watching for our group returning across the gravel.
They didn’t get back until quarter to five, all of them absolutely exhausted, including François. For a while they just sat in the food tent making zombie faces and eating cookies – although I probably ate more cookies than anyone else. Csilla came in and we pretended there had never been any cookies but I used the word cookies to describe the Kex biscuits (apparently America would call them biscuits) and we got found out, which meant we spent a while arguing over cookies vs biscuits. Hobnobs Thins are apparently cookies.
Eventually François got up to start dinner and we chopped some vegetables while he got on with butchering some huge slabs of lamb, which he rubbed with some very red marinade and took up to the top of the campsite to barbecue in a giant flat pan. Csilla made her special mash, once Canadian Jake had finished peeling an entire bag of small unappetising potatoes. Miki made salad – nowhere near enough for all of us. The mash was tasted and lovingly re-seasoned and re-mashed. I’ve never seen so much care and attention go into mashed potatoes.
We did pretty well at eating the lamb and when everyone had finished the nicely cut lamb, Clarence helped himself to an actual leg and devoured it with hands and teeth, like a man in the process of turning into a werewolf. American Jake took some nearly-discreet photos and the more I watched the more I couldn’t stop laughing. And then he had a good helping of tonight’s blueberry cheesecake.
After dinner and washing-up, we went up to the hut where François borrowed the wardens’ tablet and some wifi to help us book a car for Sunday. This had been Jake’s idea originally, then Csilla had invited herself along and now I had too. I’d planned to be the one who could drive while Jake and Csilla enjoyed the scenery but I’d deliberately left my licence at home to save weight, having had no plans to do any driving a week ago, so Jake had to drive after all. We opted for a manual – he can drive manual but prefers not to. That cost us an extra $100. We tried to book it just for the day, as early as possible until as late as possible but when we went to press the button, it gave us 2 days anyway.
We finished booking the car just in time for the Friday night bonfire – which was made of tall planks stacked in a way guaranteed to collapse and Margrét was happily spraying it with lighter fuel, much to the horror of everyone not Icelandic within half a mile.
At best, if it did collapse in a ball of flame, most of Þórsmörk is reasonably fire-proof. Has to be, it’s surrounded by volcanoes. We gathered round the fire and Jake stepped in as politely and delicately as possible to rearrange the wood as best he could without absolutely no tools. With the spare cardboard borrowed from the little shop, he at least got the fire moved from the top of the planks down to ground level where it belonged. Gradually more people appeared, including the three mysterious men the rest of the group had encountered who may have been Dutch or may have been Russian. I thought they sounded Russian but once we’d taught Germanophone Mira that the English word for “Netherlandish” is actually Dutch she recognised some of their words and we could finally confirm that they were speaking Dutch.
A big 4×4 full of kids left the small site to our east to go and play on the river crossing, backwards and forwards. We spent a while trying to figure out what they were doing but the nice people at Þórsmörk were quicker than that. They sent the tractor out to chase it away, at which point it turned on orange flashing emergency lights and fled. The tractor then loaded up a mysterious large white box and trundled back across the river bed. Gradually the group around us faded away until it was just Jake and Csilla and me plus two young boys from Ohio who were planning to get up at 3am to walk to Skogar, and an Australian couple.
Less than fives minutes after getting into my tent, it started to rain and soon the wind was howling. I was reasonably confident that my tent pegs would hold but I did eventually start to wish I’d weighed them down with rocks like pretty much everyone else. Tonight it was cold, maybe because I’d stood outside for so long. Quite the change from last night in the very same spot, when I was too hot.
Day six: Þórsmörk and going home
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