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DAY TRIPPER

“Was it sensible?  I guess not.  It's certainly not the sort of thing you would let your children do,” ..... 

I had read of glaciers in this region and now, for sure, something shone in the distance.  This was the edge of Myrdalsjokull, one of Iceland's permanent ice caps.  And from that first doubtful sighting to actually arriving at its base, I made regular use of my spy glass to examine the river of ice.  I had seen glaciers once before on a helicopter trip in New Zealand.  I remember flying low enough to see the angular blocks, the crevasses between them ….. then lower down, the plain filth of moraines, scraped from the mountain on the way down.  And fuel for wide, fast moving, sediment laden rivers heading for the sea.  To see it from the air was truly remarkable.  To cycle in a deserted valley and examine the scene from afar ….. then witness the spectacle, this tongue of moving ice, getting closer as I worked at the pedals, is quite another.  But in between was a whole lot of water.  And it was clear that there was no way I was going to keep my feet dry.  With bike lifted over my head, that day I waded carefully through a dozen or more rivers.  From simple stream, to deep, fast flowing multi choice affairs with channel and sub channel alike spread out between islands of gravel.  Unsurprisingly, given the source of the water, it was mightily cold, but the schoolboy in me took over and I wasn't turning back.  All of them a tad risky, worst were those so sediment laden that I couldn't see the bottom.  Here, with bike balanced overhead, before advancing I would gingerly put each foot forward to test for a firm river bed.  Only a little fellow, sometimes it would be thigh deep and I would be forced to brace against the current, then stabilise myself before taking the next step.  Was it sensible?  I guess not.  It's certainly not the sort of thing you would let your children do.  And I was just pleased that I didn't have my wife with me.  For she would have pointed out all the dangers and I would have had to catch the bus instead.  That's right, a regular bus service from Reykjavik follows this route.  But I'm still here to tell the tale.   

Thorsmork is set in a bowl created in the mountains and consists of a couple of small huts plus a substantial building available for renting.  Those daring enough to drive there need some substantial vehicle.  The final approach was through a river too dangerous to wade.  A tour bus stopped beside me on the approaches.  Its courier, concerned for my safety, advised using the footbridge downstream.  But reaching that involved scrambling over an obstacle course of boulders and wading through asset shrinking fast moving water.   From the river-side footpath beyond, the view of glaciers still at work carving out the scene was amazing.  The more so as now I viewed them through a wooded grove, carpeted with violets, buttercups, dandelions, even.  What a contrast with the icy scene beyond, whilst right next to me flowed its summer melt, loaded with sediment and far from clear.  Experience on earlier rivers had taught me that these were the difficult ones where it was not possible to see how deep, and what's in the way.  This, with a bike balanced overhead, too.  The bus courier had been right: there was no way I would have waded across the Krossa.  For that, ironically, is its name.  But I made it to the hut, sat on the balcony, shared my lunch break with the Germans' tourist guide, and drank her coffee.  Unusually there wasn't a word of English in her party.  From Berlin it they turned out to be the same group I had caught up with earlier at Gigjokull.  I assumed, wrongly perhaps, that they must be from former East Germany, isolated from Western influence for so long.  That would explain it.  Only afterwards did I begin to think that I should have asked her.  Too bad.  But what I do have is a photograph of me, looking rather pleased with myself, in Thorsmork's modern ice age mountain setting. 

On the return trip I stopped again at Gigjokull, and walked right to its base.  Quite alone now, and treading carefully where others had plainly been, the moraines were squishy.  Small cracks appeared all around and, somewhat uneasily I took each step ever more carefully.  Water dripped from the ice into narrow channels of muddy water.  The toilet end of a glacier is seriously unromantic.  Surrounded by cliffs of ice topped with crushed rock, I walked on a whole lot more of it.  Where streams had carved their way through I could see and touch the dirty dripping banks, and with ground rock clearly visible on top, felt justified in watching every step.  Warm by the standards of the trip, gusts of icy wind blew across the scene, kicking off a sand (or moraine) storm as I took in this somewhat unreal scene.  The ride back was tremendous, downhill.  And fast.  With the wind behind for a change I flew over the rocks that passed for a road, waded back across countless rivers, saw them combine to form just one huge, gravely, sediment laden glacial outflow that rushed along beside me. 
          A complete contrast, back in my tiny tent, out of the pouring rain, cooking inside again, a little music on the radio.  Thoroughly cosy after an exciting and challenging day, it was like arriving home.  Time to record my thoughts and feelings on the day.  One of the best.

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