Day 11: July 17, 2007 Hike to Skeiðarárjökull
Trip Start
Jul 08, 2007
1
11
21
Trip End
Jul 23, 2007
Skaftafell National Park,
Iceland
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
After another great night's sleep we had breakfast and left for the morning hike. First, we walked a couple of kilometers to Swartifoss. As always, the incredible columnar jointing amazed everyone, including me. For the first time in four visits, I walked up to the base of the falls and enjoyed the reflection of the falling water in the plunge pool.
We then hiked up to the Sjónarnípa overlook above the Skatafellsjökull. The glacier had retreated noticeably since my 2004 visit. We ate lunch and had a Brevard College foto taken with the glacier in the background. A large group of French hikers shared the spot with us, leaving about 10 minutes before we did.
As usual, all of the students who said they would hike with me in the afternoon blew me off and went their own ways. I expect it; I did the same when I was that age.
I descended back to the campground finding a pair of women's rain pants on the trail. To everyone's amusement, I tried to sell them to the French group when I caught up with them. My French is rusty but I can still communicate! Their leader agreed to take the pants and turn them in at the reception. I suspected that they might be Kathy's or Audrey's who were also ahead of me but since I was going on a long hike I wanted to turn them in as soon as possible so that their owner might retrieve them.
I headed west over the dikes and crossed the Morsá bridge on to the Skeiðarársandur. The trail is a little silly, making two sides of a right triangle in a boulder field. Wanting to look at the different facies of the 1996 jökulhlaup, I just did the hypotenuse. Although relatively flat, the ground is mostly rocks in sand and is a pain in the butt to walk on. After 3-4 km of walking, I reached the lateral moraine. The view was awesome. Rock-covered ice was everywhere. The moraine was collapsing due to kettle formation and landslides. The glacier spawned a small stream that grew to a 50-m wide river over about half a kilometer. Extremely aware of being alone in a dangerous place, I picked my way northward to the mountainside, falling half a meter through a hollowed area once.
I left the glacier through the jökulhlaup breakout and followed the marked trail for awhile. I ran out of water and filled up my camelback in a clear stream that descended that lava flows in a stairway of short cascades. Throughout most of the hike, I had beautiful view up the Morsádalur where large blocks of ice calve off of the Vatnajökull. The beautiful valley has several cirque glaciers. In one place, through my telephoto lens, I could see an enormous block of ice 30-100 m long overhanging the abyss. I kept willing it to fall but it held firm. I did hear several other blocks fall. My next hike in Skaftafell will be up the Morsá to visit the Morsádalur and see the ice falls.
After a couple of more hours of walking, abandoning the trail for firmer footing in the riversides, I made it back to the bridge. My muscles were sore as I trudged the final 2 km back to camp, arriving at about 8:30. Everyone had started to worry and were relieved to see me. I was exhausted but elated. After dinner, I intended to crawl in my bag and have a shot of scotch. I got into bed and immediately fell asleep instead.
