George Cave

Auðun seemed far from convinced.

His taxi bumped and swayed across the rubble road on the plains south of Akureyri. One by one, we dismissed his every question whilst simultaneously doubting our every answer. Yes, we knew what we were doing. Yes, we understood he was very experienced: taxi driver, pilot, fisherman and mountain rescue. And yes, we promised to phone him tomorrow when we inevitably needed a lift back out.

June, Auðun had assured us many weeks ago, is a wholly inappropriate time to traverse the wild Icelandic interior. “I recommend that you think better of your traveling and make new plan for it” his email had cautioned bluntly. But with an air of misplaced confidence we had ignored him and booked a lift with a different taxi firm, who then proceeded to hire Auðun for the journey anyway! No wonder he didn’t seem pleased. Here we were, in June, two men and two weeks of food. And we wanted to walk south to the volcanos, waterfalls and mountains beyond.

Suddenly we came across a portion of road that he declared impassable and with a farewell wave we were on our own. Scarcely rested following three hours of sleep in the cheapest hostel in Reykavik, Elliott and I picked our way uphill in the blazing sunshine. Determined to prove Auðun wrong, by mid-afternoon we had climbed hundreds of metres of ascent to the plateau. Wearing a heavy pack but a smug grin I strolled across the last of the winter’s snow. It wasn’t long before great icy lakes began to displace us sideways from our trail by several kilometres at a time, the distant glimmer of marker poles across the ice our only anchor with civilisation. Predictably they were soon lost for good and we stood alone in the expansive lunar landscape as rain began to fall. In this bleak and lifeless monochrome world my bright yellow trousers couldn’t have looked more out of place.

“Are the numbers going up or down?” I yelled supportively across the winds. Elliott’s face was locked to the stuttering dance of the GPS’s arrow, his feet unconsciously mimicking its wild swings of direction. He looked quite drunk. We agreed to camp at the first lake we found that looked drinkable.

“In this bleak and lifeless monochrome world my bright yellow trousers couldn’t have looked more out of place”

“Oh my gawwwwwd, this view is amazzzing,” our fellow adventurer from Switzerland drawled in perfect English. He was hiking alone from the northernmost to southernmost tip of Iceland, a far longer and harder journey than ours, and he seemed deliriously happy when recounting his past week struggling in thigh-deep muds and melting snows. Quite plainly our new friend didn’t share our views on the monotony of the landscape. He grinned widely from ear to ear, pausing often between words for effect, “You are the first, people, I’ve seen, in five dayyyys”. His solitary journey had sent him mad, and we nicknamed him the Swiss Cheese to cheer us up.

Prior to our departure, Elliott and I had both harboured doubts that we would really reach the coast before our time was up. Pleasant evenings spent alone with Google Earth had yielded what we felt was the shortest possible crossing from the northern coastal town of Akureyri to a southern finish at Skógar. In addition, Auðun’s 40km taxi ride had saved us a further day or more of tedious walking along the grassy estuary. Despite this, we were four days in and the finish line seemed as far away as ever.

Early next morning the Swiss Cheese beamed at us, “Don’t you knowww, its only ninnnne dayyyyys to Skogarrrr”. Off he sped in pursuit of endless Icelandic happiness. Feeling sceptical, we spied a large lake on the map someway off route. Desperate for some greenery to punctuate the greyscale vistas, we headed off on our detour.

“Our fellow adventurer seemed deliriously happy when recounting his past week struggling in thigh-deep muds and melting snows”

The rain fell hard onto the tent the next morning. On closer inspection, it turned out to be thousands of insects trapped beneath the aptly named flysheet. We donned our face nets and headed out to do logistical battle with brushing our teeth beneath the masks. Over the next week my feeble little face armour would prove more than a match for Iceland’s airborne armies and by the end of our trip it had absorbed an attractive cocktail of sweat, sun cream, dead flies and toothpaste.

However, life was looking up. I’d finally solved my rubik’s cube, the weather had settled down, and our eyes widened in delight at the dramatic water-worn vistas of plunging waterfalls, rocky gorges and moss-coated cliffs we’d been promised. We rolled on down the valley and across the road to a secluded campsite hidden amongst soft mossy rocks. Elliott grinned as we pitched the tent that night “Downnnn’t you knowwww,” he drawled mockingly, “it’s only five days to Skógar.”

Elliott and I made a rather unlikely combination. A two day trek in Sri Lanka was the sum total of his prior hiking experience so I thought him rather brave to attempt our journey. As a former colleague and housemate of mine we were well acquainted and he brought to the team a keen culinary appreciation. Arriving at Heathrow prior to our departure, Elliott had proudly presented me with forty individually sealed meal bags: measured, weighed and labelled in anticipation of the journey ahead. His meticulous preparations for our fortnight’s dining were a key contributor to the success of the trip.

However, these meticulous preparations didn’t quite extend to the weight distribution of our packs. It was the end of day six and I was unpacking my bag. “You must have a lot of food in there,” I began, “I’ve got enough meals in mine for the rest of my trip!” Elliott had a look, he had exactly the same. Perfectly fair perhaps, if we ignored that I was also carrying our shared tent, stove and fuel. The realisation of our uneven loads dawned on us and I tossed a great pile of meals his way. In his defence, he gestured meekly to my lightweight sleeping bag and roll-mat, compared to his more rudimentary Sports Direct offerings. “I don’t buy all this fancy kit so I can haul your arse across Iceland” I retorted, and the matter was settled.

“Over the next week my feeble little face armour would prove more than a match for Iceland’s airborne armies and by the end of our trip it had absorbed an attractive cocktail of sweat, sun cream, dead flies and toothpaste”

The next morning this “small taste” of Icelandic weather was rapidly in danger of becoming a “full-sized” taste. Sure, we could smell the volcanic craters, but seeing them was another matter. The day’s hiking was a stiff, seven hour traverse of Hrafntinnusker, where reduced visibility, extensive snow cover and rain that veered through every conceivable angle sought to beat us off course. Between breaks in the clouds we caught glimpses of the foreign landscape through which we rode, an incongruous mix of hot and cold where sweeping rivers of snow plunged through cracks in the earth, only to beaten back by the smoking fires of a dormant beast far beneath.

Some nifty GPS work and a desire to escape this torment saw us through and we rolled into Álftavastn late that evening. The hiking season had only just begun and the hut was barely open, inhabited that night by a sole Canadian hiker heading north to the coastline. Elliott and I decided to reward our good progress with a night off from camping and when the hut wardens joined us for dinner they brought us a gift of fresh salad and avocado to share. After a fortnight’s subsistence on couscous, porridge and nuts these beautiful, luscious riches seemed to come from a world we had long left behind. Our return gesture of half a bag of instant custard powder was politely declined.

Energy and enthusiasm restored, the next two days took us to Þórsmörk across a succession of small river crossings. The crossings themselves were quick, bracing and accompanied with just a small amount of swearing. More amusing was the inevitable people-watching as crowds gathered around these bottlenecks to debate tactics, question clothing choices and goad each other into being the first to enter. Our final day was a stupendous crossing of the infamous 2010 Icelandic eruption of which many European holidaymakers were well aware. I snapped off a piece of virgin rock from the ground beneath me as a souvenir and looked at Elliott, “I’ve got t-shirts older than that” he joked.

I thought back to the evening of day six when Elliott scrambled forty metres down into a gorge in desperate search of water, or to the morning of day ten where we rebooted the GPS and discovered for the first time a detailed map of Iceland hidden on the memory card. I remembered the way Elliott had kept his back pain at bay for two weeks with an absurd inflatable cushion wedged precariously between his rucksack and right hip. From day one I’d been forming and re-forming contingency plans, yet we had exceeded all of our expectations, crossing an entire country whilst navigating mostly on a single sheet tourist road map.

Our final hike downhill to the coast at Skógar delivered more breath-taking waterfalls and scenery than the entire two weeks of hiking combined. It was ridiculous that such a concentration of wonder would lay hidden here when we had so longed for this in the mountaineering purgatory of the first week’s hiking. But this was Iceland, beautiful yet ridiculous, a landscape so full of natural contrasts that if described in a work of fiction your novel would be classed as sci-fi. I sat with Elliott beneath the final falls of Skógarfoss, couscous in one hand, completed Rubik’s cube in the other. For these two sweet water pirates, it had been a wonderful journey.

“I thought back to the morning of day ten where we rebooted the GPS and discovered for the first time a detailed map of Iceland hidden on the memory card”