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Vatnajökull glacier Xtreme – ice climbing
The day was booked for a whole day 7 hr eXtreme glacier climbing (not just hiking).
This tour is as expensive as the “Inside Volcano” one (around 180€) , yet it requires more physical efforts and freezing weather resistance as you need to climb up and down by your own on ice without any elevator!
After getting our climbing equipment at the meeting point, the bus took us to Skaftafell national park, where we hiked and crossed a river then we arrived at the bottom of the glacier. We started to put our climbing crampons and and hike up to the glacier. Then we started to climb a wall of ice with full equipment (harness, helmet, ice climbing axes)! It looked much easier on the guides than when we did it!
I was so frozen that I did not climb till the top of the wall. Then the next time climbing exercice was more extreme.
The tour guides found a real glacier crevasse and tried to set up the rope.
The first attempt failed as the rope fell deep into the crevasse…. so they set up the rope on the other side of the crevasse. I opted out this eXtreme activity and decided to feel the excitement of others instead.
One of my friend putted her climbing axe right in the rope and that was quite a fright even for the guides that they decided to put down another rope for safety reason. Finally, everyone was safe and excited.
After the climbing activities we hiked up to the glacier and found some interesting structures such as underground water tunnel and small ice cave.
This was quite an Xtreme experience!
I think next time when the weather is nice, I would go for a whole day glacier hiking (not ice climbing) to enjoy the glacier scenery on sunny days.
Of course, if I visit Iceland during winter, I will certainly go for the Crystal Ice Cave tour!
Jökulsárlón Ice Beach / Diamond beach
After the ice climbing tour, we all felt very exhausted and very satisfied with the glacier exploring.
We made a short stop to take some “jumping photos” on a gravel road with glaciers in the background.
Then we took a stop at the diamond beach as we have noticed those shinning “diamonds/ice” on black sand beach far away.
We all felt refreshed by this stunning scenery, where you can see a lot of shinning ice/icebergs either resting on the black sand beach or floating in the sea! We even spotted a seal near a floating iceberg!
After this 20 min stop at ice beach, we went back to the car and drove all the way to our hostel as we had a lot of road to catch!
Once arrived at the east coast of Iceland, we noticed the mountains surrounded by thick clouds in front of us…..
Then by the time we climbed up to the hill, we are totally immerged inside those clouds!
There were no light and almost no sign on both side of the road.
There were ditch on one side and cliff on the other side!
We almost fell into the ditch and could barely see neither the border of the road or in front of it!
The visibility was so bad that if you put your arm straight in front of you, you could not see your hands!
One friend volunteered to jog in front of the car to check the road and he had to jog within one meter of the car otherwise we can not even see him! We continued to drive very slowly with he jogging in front of the car about 40 min! Finally, we got out of the danger zone with a full moon behind us and the midnight sun in front of us.
With almost 3 hours delay and 1 am arrival at the hostel, we finally felt safe and hungry so we made some dinner (rather midnight supper) before going to bed.
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I’m Skyangelo, the globetrotter, amateur photographer, hiker & coach behind this travel blog.
