I’ve done Askja before. Twice, in fact. In 2013, I went in a huge black jeep and swam in Viti, the warm flooded crater. In 2016, I returned because I wanted to visit Holuhraun. It was a beautiful day but the guide didn’t mention swimming until we reached Viti and I left my swimming stuff in the big white weird car because I assumed it wasn’t possible. Well, Askja is going through some changes. The technical term is uplift but in layman’s terms, the ground underneath is inflating at quite a rate – 60cm between August 2021 and June 2023 – which almost definitely means movement of magma. There’s also been a smell of sulphur reported by pilots flying over. None of that necessarily heralds an eruption – there’s no other tectonic activity, none of the earthquake swarms you’d expect before something dramatic – but I began to wonder if this might be my last chance to see the volcano as it currently looks. That’s really where this whole trip began. Let’s go to the north to see Askja – and while you’re in the north, you can cross off those three geothermal pools you haven’t visited yet.
If you’re interested in what’s going on up there, the latest update was 10am this morning, saying “no visible changes at Askja”, so that was well timed. Thanks, RUV, it’s good to have an update on publishing day.
I would have liked to go on a smaller trip in a big jeep again. As a solo traveller, I often get to sit in the front and as an emetophobe, I don’t particularly enjoy coach trips, especially not the kind that inherently involve rough roads. But I couldn’t justify the price difference on being scared so off I went with Mývatn Tours in their big high-clearance coach. Actually, it’s not such a big coach, it’s only a 45-seater, although it’s the biggest of their fleet. Obviously this isn’t one of those big shiny executive coaches like the tour companies use in the lowlands; it’s on custom suspension and probably extra-special wheels to survive crossing the Desert of Misdeeds.
Yes, Askja stands in the heart of the Desert of Misdeeds, although guide Bjarni translated it as “Lava Field of Evil Creatures”. Its Icelandic name is Ódáðahraun – easier to pronounce once you realise Icelanders just swallow up all the letters between “Ódá” and “hraun”. Bjarni also nearly ruined the entire trip by specifying that we couldn’t eat on the bus because the smell of food plus the rough roads can “’affect some people… including me, sometimes, a bit”. Yay, nothing I like better than the tour guide in the seat opposite announcing to the entire bus that he gets travelsick within the first thirty seconds of the expedition!
Spoiler alert: no one was sick. Or at least, not that I noticed and that’s all that really matters.
We made frequent stops. We departed from Myvatn Tours’ HQ three minutes down the road from Reykjahlíð and stopped at the little supermarket in the hope of finding the couple who hadn’t turned up – this was always the departure point for tours in the area but I guess they got sick of cars being left in their car park, so now we park on the patch of wasteland opposite HQ. The supermarket is much more convenient when I’m camping literally on the other side of the road! Needless to say, the missing couple weren’t waiting at the supermarket either. We never found them and we didn’t have time to search the region for them, so they missed their tour.
We stopped to pick up a group at the Hrossaborg car park, which is where the F88, our route to Askja, starts. We stopped at the nice waterfall again where we got locked out of the car in 20016 and we stopped at Herðubreiðarlindir, the little campsite and oasis where Fjalla-Eyvindur, 18th century outlaw, spent a winter. Bjarni described his shelter and then invited us to come and visit it with the words “it’s not quite as big as I think some of you are thinking”. Actually, it was bigger than I was thinking. Having seen it twice before, my memory has melted it down into a tiny hole barely big enough for one person to crouch in. I wouldn’t want to live in for longer than a couple of hours, mind you, and absolutely not in winter. Not even in summer. It’s still tiny and Bjarni’s protests that the freshwater spring would have kept it warm at about 2 degrees (better than the minus something outside) didn’t add to the appeal of the place.
Next we stopped at Jökulsá á Fjöllum, Iceland’s most powerful river. The bus drove on and picked us up a couple of hundred yards further on, giving us time for an “’adventure”’, scrambling along the rocks and finding a waterfall. That was all great except when it came time to scramble back to the bus, the group found itself stranded on the wrong side of a little glacial stream. There were plenty of stepping stones but stepping stones are slippery and not placed for convenient crossing. I just waded across in my sandals and then decided it would be a good idea to walk up to where the rest of the group had mistakenly thought they’d found an easier place to cross. I stood in the water and offered a hand as they hopped across from one big stone to the next and almost all of them took it gratefully. To be honest, I was surprised most of the men did. The internet has taught me to believe all men have too much faith in their abilities and too much scorn for people like me and it’s not actually true.
Next stop after that was in the middle of the desert, where grey rock give way to a covering of yellowish pumice. Somewhere around here, the Apollo 11 astronauts trained for their Moon mission and so Bjarni suggested a “moon photo” which would look great on Instagram – jump as the photo’s taken so it looks like zero gravity (going to nitpick here: there’s gravity on the moon, it’s just not as strong as on earth). Mine came out blurry but it went on Instagram nonetheless – I was pretty proud that I’d managed to capture myself in mid-air while taking a timer selfie.
And then onwards to Askja! We had about two and a half hours from the car park. It’s impossible for one guide to look after an entire coachload of people who walk at different paces so he’d show us the way to get started, answer any questions and then we had to note for ourselves how long it took us to walk so we’d know when we needed to set off to be back at the bus for 3.15.
I dawdled. I ended up at the back of the group. I was taking photos and videos. You probably won’t have seen them yet but I tried to vlog the trip and I wanted lots of information in the Askja one, which meant talking to the camera when no one was watching. Still, it took 35 minutes to walk the -2.5km across the caldera to the lakes which was the time Bjarni suggested as being about average. I remember this being a difficult walk before. Well, not difficult but there were two patches of slushy snow which always slows me down dramatically and I was doing it at the guides’ pace rather than my own, which mean going a bit too fast for me personally. No problem at all at my own speed and with those two patches of snow gone! Am I going to blame that on climate change? Maybe. On the other hand, there’s magma moving around underground and that can definitely affect the temperature of the surface. On the other other hand, we couldn’t swim in Viti because that same activity has lowered the temperature of the water as well as dramatically dropping its pH. It’s now about as acidic as stomach acid. Bjarni wouldn’t try to stop us if we wanted to swim but he told us strongly that it was not recommended.
I carried my swimming stuff with me but I didn’t swim. Hard to justify it when you’ve been told why you shouldn’t, when no one else is doing it and when there’s a sign at the top of the crater recommending not to, complete with pH charts, and when you remember just how deep and steep the crater is. I’m too old and tired to scramble up the side of that, knowing I’ve still got to walk across the crater and I’m probably now against the clock. So instead I wandered around the top, took in the view, took lots of photos and filmed a vlog that’s going to verge on Tom Scott-style informational video.
What did I talk about? Well, calderas, the 1875 eruption that formed the current view, swimming in Viti, the ongoing uplift, the scientists who vanished, the depth of that eldritch lake… plenty to talk about at Askja. When the video is done, I’ll let you know. It’s currently scheduled for October – it takes me time to edit an entire series what with work and blogging and kayaking, and then it’s day four of the series, so October 24th, maybe.
We stopped at Dreki on the way back for coffee and waffles and to stretch our legs – not that they needed a lot of stretching after the mere twenty-minute drive from the Askja car park. But from here we were basically going to “bomb it back to Mývatn” with only a quick toilet break at Herðubreiðarlindir. It’s only 100km from Askja back to the Ring Road – and then another 35km back to Mývatn – but because of the lava field, it takes some three hours. I looked out of the window and amused myself by making up stories and was then horrified to discover how long it takes to get from the F88 turning back to the village, thinking by then that we were virtually back. I suppose, having done the journey in reverse only that morning, I should have known exactly how long it takes but it still surprised me.
We reached Mývatn Tours’ HQ just after 7.30 in the evening. I’d been hatching a plan ever since Bjarni mentioned “hopefully we’ll be back in Mývatn in time for the seven o’clock news”. I’d been anticipating at late returning – 10pm, 11pm maybe. Of course, that’s been the case on previous trips because 1) the car broke down and we were stranded for hours 2) we went to Holuhraun too which extended the tour. If we were getting back that early, it might be worth checking the opening hours of Mývatn Nature Baths. Not that I needed another geothermal experience, with three already in my itinerary and two already crossed off, but I haven’t been to the Nature Baths since 2016, I’m plotting an “ultimate guide to the best geothermal spas” post and Bjarni was right, it would be nice to relax my muscles in some silky hot water after a day bumping across a lava field in a bus, to say nothing of relaxing my mind which couldn’t quite let go of the presence of other people on the bumpy bus. The Nature Baths haven’t changed much since I last went there, so they’re not going to get a post of their own – maybe next year, as they’re having a major expansion due to open next summer – but suffice it to say that the water was gorgeous and the views were… well, ok, the views were limited by the fences around the expansion work. But the views across the lake were gorgeous, the sunset was wonderful and I stayed in so long that it was getting distinctly dark by the time I got back to my tent.
