Skaftafell : Walking on Glacier and to Svartfloss

Today was spent in and around the Skaftafell National Park.  This was Island's second national park, established in 1967,and now covers 4,807square kilometres including a considerable part of Glacier Vatnajokull.  There are no roads in the park, but a network of trails offers the opportunity for different length hikes.

We were offered three main options :

- visit Puffins on an offshore island

- walk on the glacier

and/or

- walk in the National Park where Svartifoss was a major attraction.

As I'd recently been to Skomer to see the Puffins, I decided to give this a miss but went to see the majority of the group who opted for this trip off.  They were loaded into the back of a farm trailer and towed across the shallows by a tractor to the offshore island.   From what they later reported, they didn't get as close as we had in Wales.

About half-a-dozen of us headed to the Park's HQ - a couple set off for a long hike, two for a shorter flatter one and two of us headed to book a guided walk on the Glacier.

After a minibus ride from the HQ, our guide taught us to put on and crampons and issued us with an ice axes - this seemed only to be used as a walking stick rather than anything technical.  The walk took us on to the Svínafellsjökull glacier tongue - a breathtaking spur from the Vatnajökull glacier.  We walked through a wonderland of glacial ice sculptures, meandering through ice ridges and the deep crevasses of the glacier.  The guide gave us a brief introduction to the science & mechanics of glaciers - explaining how they were formed and how crevasses were made.  Evidently, in the 9th Cent, Island had no glaciers and since then they have, to some degree or other, come and gone.  Forget your images of white/blue ice grinding down a mountain, this was was covered with a layer of volcanic ash that gave it the appearance of being made of rock.

Whilst we were there our guide had a radio message from a colleague to say that his party had just reached the summit of Hvannadalshnúkur (6,900 feet) - the highest point in Island  located in the north-western rim of the Öræfajökull volcano.  Starting at 0400, it had taken them 7 hours to reach the summit and it would be a similar time to descend again.

After a quick refreshment stop, we joined up with one of the Puffin watchers who had now arrived at the NP and set off for the 2Km uphill walk to Svartifoss.  It obtains its name not from the colour of its waters, which foam white over the cliff edge, but from the black basalt columns that flank the waterfall.

Fed by ice-cold melt water from Svinafellsjokull, the narrow strand of water pours over a broad cliff of hexagonal basalt columns that seem to hang like organ pipes over the edge of a horseshoe-shaped amphitheater.  This was a spectacular waterfall thanks to hanging columns underlying it. While basalt columns aren't unique and it's not very big (only 20m tall), the columns are very pronounced.  These columns are clearly seen reflected in the design of Reykjavik cathedral - Hallgrimskirkja (Hallgrim's Church) in Reykjavik.

After viewing the Foss, we left the crowds behind and headed off for a couple of hours across the moorland to a viewpoint that overlooked the Skaftafellsjökull spur from the main glacier.  From there it was a surprisingly long trek back down to the HQ for more, well earned refreshment and to watch a video of the impact of recent eruptions.

From here we headed East along the Ring Road - unfortunately - past last night's excellent guesthouse.  We stopped briefly at a lagoon at the base to look at the icebergs before heading off to our night's stop - the Guesthouse Hali.  On the way into the site, there was a building that was decorated with a row of enormous bookends celebrating a local author Þórbergur Þórðarson