Over the last three weeks or so I’ve been publishing my diaries from the Laugavegur Trail. You may have read them. Give or take a bit of clearing up, they’re pretty much exactly as I wrote them, sitting in a tent of an evening.
If you read my Day One diary, you might know that it all went a bit wrong, by which I mean that if I hadn’t been with a guide, I probably would have collapsed in a blizzard and died. And obviously, that shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t be able to look back at the point at which an alternative universe branched off and say “I would have died”.
So, what went wrong?
The weather
Oh yes, the weather. I’d got sweaty earlier on so now I was wet through and it was snowing. In fact, it was a white-out blizzard. By the time we reached the “long gentle slope” I could no longer keep up a pace fast enough to keep me warm and I soon got cold. Didn’t know how cold at the time. It was only when we reached the hut and I was too cold to take off my outside clothes or even my bag, and when I got changed, I discovered huge swathes of my skin were burnt red with cold. One of the things that really exhausted me was walking in that deep snow – when you sink six inches on every step, it’s not efficient. And I had something that I’m reluctant to describe as a panic attack but certainly had some resemblance to one when sky and mountain merged into each other and I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.
Walking speed
This is where I start to wonder if I’d have been better off on my own. We kept up an incredible pace. Well, the rest of the group did. I struggled along at the back and spent those brief moments when they waited for me just getting half my breath back before marching on again. The result was that within a mile, I was soaked in sweat and feeling dizzy with the heat. So I took my insulating layers off. The trouble was that we continued at that pace right up until I couldn’t physically do it any longer. Hot and sweaty is not the same as truly warm – I was too hot to even think about putting any layers back on and by the time I wasn’t, I was too cold to even think about taking off my waterproof to put anything on underneath it. Snow or no snow, I’d have walked at a more comfortable pace if I’d been alone. Shouldn’t have got so sweaty or tired, therefore shouldn’t have ended up so cold or exhausted, even if the walk took twice as long.
Lack of food
Our bus broke down on the way to Landmannalaugar and we took advantage of sitting in the middle of the Highlands to have lunch. That was easily an hour before we even started walking. I’m someone who needs to eat little and often. We did pause to snack on cookies but I was stressed and upset by not being able to keep up and totally out of breath and I can’t even force food down under those circumstances, my throat just locks up. What I really needed was a bag of Juliet’s Special Trail Mix (sticky sugary cereal and a few Galaxy Counters) in my pocket to graze the whole way. After the first hour, it was too cold and wet to stop for longer than it took for François to produce cookies. It wasn’t until that Long Gentle Slope that I realised I was hungry and if I felt hungry, then I’d clearly been in need of real food for quite a while. Same goes for lack of liquid – stopping and taking my bottle out of my bag became impossible. I carry a small folding bag that clips to my waistbelt and if I’d filled that on Monday it would have made a lot of difference.
Not knowing where we were going
We had an email on Friday telling us the weather was too bad to start the walk on Monday. Accordingly, we packed on Sunday night for a night at Landmannalaugar, and presumably an afternoon either in the hot spring or day-hiking in the area. It wasn’t until we were on the bus, more than halfway there, before we were told the weather was too bad to camp at Landmannalaugar and we were going to start the walk after all and stay in the hut. At least, I’d like to blame that. But if I’d thought I was going to Landmannalaugar, I should have had my swimming stuff in my bag and I didn’t. But I was carrying far too much – I had my river-crossing shoes despite there being no rivers on this stretch. I had my journal, which was a decent weight before I stuck everything in, I had my Instax camera (which I carried for the entire week and it’s a weight worth carrying), an entire bag of First Aid/washing stuff and far too much food. I had to hand some of it over to François and Jake.
Mental State
And finally. We started so fast and I very quickly realised I was not going to be able to keep up this pace for another hour, let alone the next four to six days. That’s scary. First I get upset because this is horrendous. Then I start to believe I can’t do this and once you believe that, even a 7.5 mile hike in the snow starts to look impossible. And once it looks impossible, it becomes impossible. And then you’re cold and tired and hungry and carrying too much stuff and you know what? It’s impossible.
That’s what went wrong on Monday. If not for François, who almost carried me the last three kilometres, I would have died in that blizzard. I dithered over whether to go with a tour group or not. It was expensive. Hellishly expensive. But I knew that if the weather comes down, you can get lost very easily. Marker posts vanish in fog or blizzard. So do landmarks. Maps are nowhere near as good as our precious beautiful 25:1 OS maps. Inexperienced and alone, the Laugavegur Trail can be fatal. So it’s nice to know for certain that I made the right call.
But you know what? I had a tall hyper-competent Belgian holding my arm and he saved my life. I survived Monday.
This little video, taken by fellow walker Clarence, shows the snowstorm before the actual blizzard hit.
This little video shows conditions at the hut on Monday night.
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