Iceland Day Five - Ice caves and icebergs
Mar. 14th, 2025 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
The weather did not improve on day five. There are a lot more photos taken on my phone, for the same reason of wind and rain rendering my real camera's lens a raindrop-sodden mess. Between black lava rock, grey mist and ice, there are also a lot of photographs that look like they were shot in black and white. They weren't, I swear! It's all in full colour. It's just bizarrely hard to believe...
8.40am at the Hali Country Hotel, looking across Hringvegur (Highway One) to the mountains.
We met up with our tour guides for the ice cave at the Glacier Lagoon car park. It was misty and drizzly on the banks of the lagoon, but we got to see our first icebergs!
Our transportation to the glacier.
The van took us so far, and then we had about a 20 minute walk to the foot of the glacier, across some stark and desolate landscape with a river of rushing meltwater. We made the walk with the wind and rain at our backs, and we were already discussing that it wasn't going to be fun walking into it going the other way...
Our first view of Breidamerkurjokull - one of the many glacial fingers that extend out from the main glacier, Vatnajokull.
The name of this finger means 'Wide Woodland Glacier', which seems odd when there's not a tree in sight for many miles. Apparently there were actually woods here before the Little Ice Age.
A hundred years ago, the glacier went almost all the way to the sea and there was no Glacier Lagoon. The glacier currently retreats at a rate of about 200m a year.
We then put on our mini-spikes for the rope-assisted climb up a short way onto the glacier and into one of the ice caves.
Near the cave entrance, the ice looks mainly white with a lot of external light, only the first hints of blue.
And dramatic glassy patterns.
Some areas that appear more teal.
And then deeper in, where the ice is thicker and the only light comes from torch beams, the whole ceiling shines a vivid blue.
A hole in the cave ceiling letting in light from above.
A secondary, smaller entrance to the cave, looking out onto the glacier. (Not black and white, I swear.)
My brother, niece, me, nephew and sis (me with the dramatic shadow across my face like I'm wearing a highwayman's mask).
And then we came out of the cave to find the weather had improved! There were glimpses of sun, and we didn't have to walk back to the van in the rain after all :-)
Sadly the respite was brief. By the time we'd grabbed lunch back at the cafe at the car park (not recommended, they serve mediocre lukewarm soup at high prices, but they have something of a captive audience), the rain was back, and harder than ever.
We then had time to grab some some photos of the icebergs in Glacier Lagoon. The icebergs take about five years to drift down from where they break off the glacier to where the lagoon meets the ocean.
The plan for the afternoon was to go to Diamond Beach. Diamond Beach, like most in Iceland, is black sand, because it's ground down lava. The selling point of Diamond Beach, and the reason for the name, is that the remnants of Icebergs that drift down Glacier Lagoon and out to sea wash up there. So you have a black beach with mini icebergs. And on this occasion the kind of sea that blends right into the sky, because there's just as much water in both.
This melting iceberg fragment looked like a skull.
By this time, there was blowing wind and pelting rain, and it made for a less than pleasant walk on the beach, but still some spectacular photos.
At that point, we also had some drama. My nephew spent barely ten minutes on the beach before retreating to the van. Me, niece and sis stuck it out for a little over half an hour before deciding enough was enough. My brother stayed out there.
We waited and waited. An hour went by. And then we started to ask ourselves what might have happened to him. Surely he wouldn't still be out there more than an hour later in those conditions? What if he's been washed out to sea? My brother is exactly the kind of person who would take insane risks, and there weren't many people out there walking the beach that day to see if an accident happened.
We tried phoning him. No response, but that wasn't a surprise - not much signal out there. We had an internet dongle in the rented van, which was fantastic, because we had signal everywhere. But he might not on the beach. And even if he did, would he notice his phone ringing in his pocket through all the layers?
We debated going out to look for him. But where to start? The beach is very large, and if we sent someone out to search and then he came back, we would have replaced one missing person with another. How long should we wait before we called search and rescue?
And then he rocked up again with the biggest grin on his face saying that he'd got the most spectacular photos ever! And also his feet were soaked and up past his knees, because yes, he'd waded out into the sea to get better photos of the icebergs and sometimes the waves were faster than he was. (We were not wrong about my brother being that kind of person - yes, he thought it was worth paddling into a stormy Atlantic ocean in Iceland in winter to get more impressive photos...)
There were still a couple of hours of daylight left, but after the stroll on the beach we had all been quite cold and wet enough, and everyone except my brother had been getting quite stressed, and for the first and only time, we cut the day short and went back to the hotel. Which served a very nice lamb stew :-)
8.40am at the Hali Country Hotel, looking across Hringvegur (Highway One) to the mountains.
We met up with our tour guides for the ice cave at the Glacier Lagoon car park. It was misty and drizzly on the banks of the lagoon, but we got to see our first icebergs!
Our transportation to the glacier.
The van took us so far, and then we had about a 20 minute walk to the foot of the glacier, across some stark and desolate landscape with a river of rushing meltwater. We made the walk with the wind and rain at our backs, and we were already discussing that it wasn't going to be fun walking into it going the other way...
Our first view of Breidamerkurjokull - one of the many glacial fingers that extend out from the main glacier, Vatnajokull.
The name of this finger means 'Wide Woodland Glacier', which seems odd when there's not a tree in sight for many miles. Apparently there were actually woods here before the Little Ice Age.
A hundred years ago, the glacier went almost all the way to the sea and there was no Glacier Lagoon. The glacier currently retreats at a rate of about 200m a year.
We then put on our mini-spikes for the rope-assisted climb up a short way onto the glacier and into one of the ice caves.
Near the cave entrance, the ice looks mainly white with a lot of external light, only the first hints of blue.
And dramatic glassy patterns.
Some areas that appear more teal.
And then deeper in, where the ice is thicker and the only light comes from torch beams, the whole ceiling shines a vivid blue.
A hole in the cave ceiling letting in light from above.
A secondary, smaller entrance to the cave, looking out onto the glacier. (Not black and white, I swear.)
My brother, niece, me, nephew and sis (me with the dramatic shadow across my face like I'm wearing a highwayman's mask).
And then we came out of the cave to find the weather had improved! There were glimpses of sun, and we didn't have to walk back to the van in the rain after all :-)
Sadly the respite was brief. By the time we'd grabbed lunch back at the cafe at the car park (not recommended, they serve mediocre lukewarm soup at high prices, but they have something of a captive audience), the rain was back, and harder than ever.
We then had time to grab some some photos of the icebergs in Glacier Lagoon. The icebergs take about five years to drift down from where they break off the glacier to where the lagoon meets the ocean.
The plan for the afternoon was to go to Diamond Beach. Diamond Beach, like most in Iceland, is black sand, because it's ground down lava. The selling point of Diamond Beach, and the reason for the name, is that the remnants of Icebergs that drift down Glacier Lagoon and out to sea wash up there. So you have a black beach with mini icebergs. And on this occasion the kind of sea that blends right into the sky, because there's just as much water in both.
This melting iceberg fragment looked like a skull.
By this time, there was blowing wind and pelting rain, and it made for a less than pleasant walk on the beach, but still some spectacular photos.
At that point, we also had some drama. My nephew spent barely ten minutes on the beach before retreating to the van. Me, niece and sis stuck it out for a little over half an hour before deciding enough was enough. My brother stayed out there.
We waited and waited. An hour went by. And then we started to ask ourselves what might have happened to him. Surely he wouldn't still be out there more than an hour later in those conditions? What if he's been washed out to sea? My brother is exactly the kind of person who would take insane risks, and there weren't many people out there walking the beach that day to see if an accident happened.
We tried phoning him. No response, but that wasn't a surprise - not much signal out there. We had an internet dongle in the rented van, which was fantastic, because we had signal everywhere. But he might not on the beach. And even if he did, would he notice his phone ringing in his pocket through all the layers?
We debated going out to look for him. But where to start? The beach is very large, and if we sent someone out to search and then he came back, we would have replaced one missing person with another. How long should we wait before we called search and rescue?
And then he rocked up again with the biggest grin on his face saying that he'd got the most spectacular photos ever! And also his feet were soaked and up past his knees, because yes, he'd waded out into the sea to get better photos of the icebergs and sometimes the waves were faster than he was. (We were not wrong about my brother being that kind of person - yes, he thought it was worth paddling into a stormy Atlantic ocean in Iceland in winter to get more impressive photos...)
There were still a couple of hours of daylight left, but after the stroll on the beach we had all been quite cold and wet enough, and everyone except my brother had been getting quite stressed, and for the first and only time, we cut the day short and went back to the hotel. Which served a very nice lamb stew :-)
no subject
Date: 2025-03-15 04:59 am (UTC)Anyway...great photos. Not my thing, but I'm glad you got to do it.
The black sand is amazing. You also see it in Kaikoura in New Zealand. Magical sight!
no subject
Date: 2025-03-15 03:00 pm (UTC)The ice cave was definitely one of the trip highlights. and it's something you can only do in winter. When the ice is melting the caves can collapse (and one did exactly that last year, killing someone who should NOT have been inside it in August).
There are some black sand beaches in Hawai'i' and some Caribbean islands too. The ones we saw there looked different under the sun with stunning blue sea :-)
no subject
Date: 2025-03-18 04:53 am (UTC)The pictures in the cave look like something out of a science fiction movie, the colors and shapes are gorgeous!
no subject
Date: 2025-03-18 03:41 pm (UTC)The ice cave was fantastic - it was one of things my niece wanted to do that I might not have bothered with, but I was so glad we did.