Week 54- Part 2 Laugavegur Trail

Friday 27th July, we woke around 07:30, had breakfast, took down the tent, were recommended to do at least 24km to avoid the exposed campsite and set off. Our journey took us past the sulphur vents to start and was quite steep as we climbed up to the snow field.

In dense fog, wind and mist we walked from snow to black sand to snow, occasionally not seeing the next trail marker. This made seeing the memorials all the scarier. We stopped after 12km at the first hut at around midday to have lunch.

We could see just how exposed the camping was. The clouds started to lift as we were eating, and it was nice with the sun on our backs. Around 12:30 we set off once more, through the similar uphill snowy terrain but with ever improving visibility. After an hour we climbed up one very steep hill to look behind us at a beautiful view back to the hut.

We continued along the ridge, saw a plane and brilliant orange peaks before winding down to a river crossing. The weather was now incredible, and we came up a hill to look down on the valley below with the river delta, glistening lake, vibrant green and black mountains dotted with snow.

The view seemed to go on forever and was probably the greatest view I’ve ever seen. We took our time on the way down to enjoy the view, stopping a few times.

At the next river crossing we met Mark, a lab manager for ‘Waters Corp’ from Boston. He was mad. So full of life, asking us all about our lives. He told us that watching our tripod method of river crossing made him initially think that I was helping my disabled younger brother. He has two young kids in Sweden, and he was sleeping in a Bivvy bag. We walked together the rest of the way to the lake at the next hut, being sure to take in the view behind.

We talked about careers and he told us we should marry someone who is younger. We parted company at the lake. We rested for about an hour and hypothesised swimming across the lake and then, as the weather was so good, decided to walk another 4km to the next campsite bringing our total to 28km for the day.

There were a couple of river crossings but easy walking on the lava flow and the campsite was far more sheltered. We ate couscous, lentils and soup with Eric from Canada, a semi-retired gymnastics coach. When the weather closed in, we ran for the tent, played Chinese poker, go-fish and tried to do magic.

Saturday 28th July, we woke around 07:00, packed up and left within an hour as the weather was due to worsen. The visibility was not as good, but it was dry. It was mainly flat, walking along black sand and a lava flow. I did have to dig a hole to poo- sadly others didn’t have the same courtesy. The main thing of note was a relatively wide and cold river crossing. We saw a couple of nice waterfalls and reached camp by 11:30.

After some deliberation we decided to stay the night and found a very sheltered spot to pitch our tent. We went into a marquee style tent and were basically alone to start with, apart from Eric but he decided to keep going. We had the usual lunch plus the free couscous I picked up at the Geysir campsite. We were sitting playing cards at the table as the tent became more and more packed from people trying to get out of the rain. We played Yaniv and Hearts with Isaac (Aussie who we have been playing cat and mouse with who also says Struth).

Eventually an English woman came along and asked if we, plus a big eastern European group, would move so her group of teenagers could cook dinner. We moved and played some word games in a corner of the now hot, humid and sardine like tent (condensation had started to fall from the roof). Somehow, we lost our space at the table when the English group left so had to cook our pasta meal standing. I nearly spilled all our food on the floor but managed to catch the pot. With little space in the big tent we decided to retire to our own tent to play some more cards before sleeping.

Sunday 29th July, the rain during the night was quite extraordinary. Both Sam and I woke several times from the force of it but we stayed dry and were fairly sheltered from the wind. It was very busy trying to get ready to go in the morning. It was quite warm out, so it made for pleasant walking once we got going. It was mainly overcast with bits of sun breaking though but good visibility overall. The views which we were told were ‘a bit boring’ continued to be breath taking with vast gorges, glorious black sand and we even saw some tree like vegetation for the first time.

It was mainly downhill as we caught sight of the sea and finished with a surprisingly deep river crossing that was also fast. We had spent the journey playing leapfrog with three American mountain cyclists. At this point we had officially completed the 57km Laugavegur trail, so we stopped for lunch to celebrate. After an hour, having thrown the frisbee and played on the swing, we walked the final 2km to our campsite.

It was along a stony river delta which set us up to start out to Skogar the next day. We pitched the tent at ‘our best pitch so far’ and hung the hammock. While we waited for it to be a reasonable hour to have dinner, we threw the frisbee before having our classic couscous-lentil-soup combo on a converted swing set. I shaved and then we read our books for a couple of hours before bed.

Monday 30th July, we got up at 06:30 to give us plenty of time to complete the 27km we had ahead of us. I nearly took a free hiking pole but thought better of it. When we set off at 07:50 we were a little above sea level and the sun was shining.

Our path took us steeply up for an hour and a half with the wind steadily getting stronger and spatters of rain in the air. It remained dry above us until we reached the first hut as the rain seemed to be going around the mountain instead. After the REALLY steep part we came out onto a massive plateau and the wind became a gale. We had to walk with a lean and hang onto our rain covers and we were still being blown sideways.

As we continued up and up the wind became ever stronger (I imagine about 100km/hr) and walking was increasingly difficult as we switched between gravelly sand and snow. It must be said that the views and the experience were quite incredible. At one stage we took a slight detour off the main path due to poor markings but made out way back on after only a little bit of worry. After 3 hours of some of the toughest walking and strongest winds I’ve ever experienced, climbing over 1100m and starting down again we came to the hut. An American group had been there the night before and left a whole load of food which we ate as if it were Christmas. We were there first so had the pick of the lot, including bread, ham, jam, apples and dates. Slowly other groups joined us including three Germans (Paul, Anki and Kat) who we have been overtaking most days and seeing at all the campsites. We ate with them for over an hour and then relaxed on the mattresses by the heater. Shortly after 13:00 we set off once more for Skogar.

The path started along a rough, rocky road and after about 30min the rain started, and it didn’t stop for about an hour. The track was a gradual down hill and we saw the bikers a few more times. The ran conveniently stopped as we came to the first of many waterfalls.

Some of the falls were truly spectacular with great drops and huge volumes of water. In many cases the spray caused the nearby rocks to be extremely green. We saw over a dozen big falls in the last hour including the monstrously beautiful Skogafoss right at the end at around 16:30. The campsite was no great shakes, but we pitched the tent and put on dry clothes.

After a little while we went to the bar to have a hot chocolate with Paul and use the clean bathrooms. Paul carried down five eggs which the Americans had left and boiled them up so we each had an egg to go with our pasta, lentils, soup and couscous. It was a triumphant meal which we ate with the German trio. After paying for the campsite we headed back to the bar and had chocolate cake and ginger ale. We were ridiculed for sharing a piece of cake. Paul bought us lemonades after too as we spent the evening chatting till around 23:00.

You can see all of the photos from Iceland here.