Sunday, August 21: Backtracking to the east, where we will stay another night in Höfn, we take a detour to a walking trail that goes to the Fláajökull glacier tongue, one of many glacier tongues flowing south from Vatnajökull glacier.
We have to take a gravel access road for 8km to a small car park. It’s a long, bumpy and slow drive but manageable enough in our 2WD car.
A sign at the entrance warns of quicksand and dangerously cold water, sometimes covered with a thin layer of ice. There is also a high risk of falling rocks and rock slides in steep hillsides next to retreating glaciers. The sign also warns that “fatal accidents have occurred due to collapsing blocks of ice, falls into crevasses and hypothermia. Some have never returned from a glacier visit, their fate still unknown.”
The glacier tongue doesn’t look like it’s that far away, but, as we find every time we walk to a glacier, appearances are deceiving.
It is an awfully gray day, and quite dark and uninviting.
We cross a suspension bridge that leads to the trail. It’s a wobbly bridge and we can’t help bouncing around on it like a couple of kids as we cross.
We cross paths with a man and woman walking across the rocky field in the picture below. The woman tells us she thought it would be a shortcut, but because the ground is sandy and rocky, it was not a shortcut after all. She advises us to stay on the trail.
It takes us a while to get to the lagoon at the edge of the glacier tongue.
Apparently, Fláajökull has retreated more than two kilometers (1 mile) over the last century.
There are a few spots of color, little tufts of wildflowers that manage to eke out a living in this rocky terrain.
The path winds along the edge of the lagoon over rocky terrain with often poor footing. Sometimes it’s a little close to the edge and, as some of the ground on the edge of the lagoon looks muddy, I can’t help but wonder if it’s quicksand, especially after reading the warning sign.
The path, covered in loose rocks, rounds a precarious point on a narrow ledge. I’m leery about proceeding around this point as I don’t want to fall into the icy water or sink into quicksand! Mike goes to the point while I linger behind, refusing to go any further.
From this point, Mike can see some hardy souls who have walked around the point up to the edge of the glacier, but I’m not willing to be one of those hardy souls. The path is just too narrow and I’m too much of a klutz.
We slowly make our way back along the path, where I find more colorful wildflower tufts tucked in around the rocks, the only splashes of color in this barren place.
We continue picking our way among the rocks along the glacier tongue’s lagoon. Several times we lose the path and come to a dead-end where it’s impossible to proceed. We have to backtrack and gingerly find our way to the path again. It’s not well-marked at all.
Finally, we make it back to the car park. From there, we drive slowly back along the 8km gravel road, passing some sheep along the way.
We head back to Höfn, where we will check into our second hotel there, eat some dinner, and take a walk on a marshy path on the promontory Ósland, along Hornafjörður.
If people don’t take notice of that sign with its dire predictions, they’re crazy. You got some beautiful photos from the path.
That’s what I thought, Carol. Mike is more intrepid about these things! It was such a gray day; I wonder how it would have all looked with the sun shining. 🙂
Sparkling, I suspect.
It’s quite ugly till you get up close, Cathy! Not helped at all by those grey skies. Incredible though. 🙂
It was quite awesome to see a glacier up close, although it was much blacker and dirtier than I imagined. And you’re right, the gray skies didn’t help one bit. But oh well, at least we got out walking. 🙂
It’s a really nice blog. I like it. It is beautifully written and explained. The uploaded images in this blog are looking very amazing. I have also visited this place once.
Thanks so much, George.