Deleting old posts that have never been read and are not doing their job has a definite upside: I get to write them again but better! And so to my adventure snowmobiling on a volcano!
This must have been about 2013 and I’d finally given in to the allure of driving a scary tough machine across a snowfield. I was in a minibus and we’d made the two hour journey from Reykjavik to Sólheimajökull, one of the tongues leading down from Mýrdalsjökull. I already knew the lower end of this glacier; it’s a popular place for buses to take their tourists to get their up-close look at the ice, although not too close. Even at the snout, glaciers can be a hazard to life and limb if you haven’t got a professional literally checking your every step. My bus stopped here to drop off some of our fellow passengers. I can’t remember what they were doing – the glacier hike, maybe. Surely not paragliding – I’d remember that because I’d be half-dead from envy, yet I do almost remember it. Either way, they weren’t snowmobiling. The rest of us, plus some others who’d arrived independently, were decanted into a huge black 4×4 for our adventure.
The glacier’s snout wasn’t suitable for snowmobiling, too icy and rocky and rough, so our truck ploughed its way, slowly and painfully up the track that went partway up the mountain, and further into cloud, until we reached the snowmobiling centre. A log cabin, a shipping container and a line of red snowmobiles awaited us.
I’d seen in all the sales stuff that you needed a valid driving licence to drive a snowmobile and I’d brought mine. It’s not something I often carry when I travel unless I’m going to hire a car and I was some time off being brave enough for that. I was therefore surprised when no one even mentioned that bit of bureaucracy during the paperwork. We had to sign our lives away, give permission for this and that but never actually prove we were able to drive. I suppose ability to drive a car is irrelevant to driving a snowmobile.
We got all dressed up in padded suits and thick gloves – I seem to remember my own padded mountain mittens and merino gloves were approved for my use – and helmets with balaclavas underneath, and then we went to meet the snowmobiles. We’d be sharing. Most people had come in couples but us solo people were randomly matched and I was paired with a French solo tourist called Laura. And angel that she was, she volunteered me to be the first driver.
I’m glad she did, because I might have been too scared to drive if I’d had the chance to find out what snowmobiling is like before we got started. You’re on a machine that really shouldn’t be big enough for two, driven by a high-speed caterpillar track at the back and steered by two short skis attached to the front. I did not find the contraption particularly driver-friendly. You have to go fast enough for movement to be smooth but not so fast you lose control. Once you’re moving, far too quickly, over a bumpy sloping glacier, the little machine starts to feel very top-heavy with two adults sitting on it and I spent the entire ordeal absolutely convinced we were going to roll. One of the other pairs did roll and while there was no damage and it was righted easily enough, it didn’t add to my confidence in my snowmobile’s stability.
We followed Þórr, our guide, in a straight line avoiding the invisible crevasses under the snow and I began to feel more comfortable on the snowmobile while we were going in a straight line. I went off-track a little at one point and it was a huge pull to coax it back into the line. My arms were aching from the effort of squeezing the throttle with my right hand all the time as well as squeezing but eventually I figured out how to ride without arthritis-inducing squeezing. Just let your hand gently apply pressure.
Visibility was vanishing. I could hardly see the lights of the snowmobile in front of us and although I could make out a faint snow powder being churned up, that wasn’t what was making me blind. Neither was the cloud – it was low, but not that low. I should have realised sooner that it was me breathing inside my helmet and steaming up my sunglasses.
I have to admit, it was all pretty spectacular, though. Underneath our tracks was an active and very dangerous volcano, all we could see for miles was snow-covered ice cap and beyond that, cloud. We stopped at the top for photos – there had been no chance while driving, or even just while riding. You need to hang on. And fool that I am, no matter how scary it had been driving it, I wanted to drive some more. Not even because now it was my turn to face being a passenger.
I already knew that the snowmobile leans and wobbles. Now I’d be experiencing the leaning and wobbling with no control at all over its movement. Should have paid the supplement to get a snowmobile of my own. I don’t like being dependent on someone else’s balance. It’s why I’ll never ride a tandem or get on the back of a motorbike. And yet here I was, on the back of a motorbike, only one adapted for zooming across snow.
Actually, snowmobiling isn’t beautiful. You’re on a vehicle with a tiny engine making a huge racket. It’s a Jack Russell that thinks it’s a T-Rex, screeching and whining through the pristine glacial serenity and it also stinks of two-stroke. They’re a practical way of covering large snowy distances fairly quickly and safely but they do not enhance the atmosphere of a snowy mountainside.
I couldn’t even appreciate the view on the way down. I was wrapped around Laura and my balaclava had slipped enough that breathing began to mist up my glasses again. I was careering downhill on an overgrown lawnmower, in the fog, with no control over the snowmobile, on a lumpy glacier and doing it blind. Better, I suppose, than driving blind but perhaps marginally more terrifying.
I was glad to get back to the hut, to get out of the balaclava and take a look at the view. It wasn’t so cloudy and the sky was making beautiful pictures over the hut. Back at the bottom of the mountain we had time to eat our lunch before rejoining the rest of our original group and setting sail for Reykjavik, via the folk museum at Skógar.
