Iceland- Day 5

We were picked up this morning at our hotel (or shall I say “our chalet”) by Trustey (pronounced “Troosty”) sporting a modified truck with enormous wheels.  It was so high we needed a staircase to board.  

We stopped by a campground to pick up another young couple who happened to be honeymooning in Iceland.  The road to Laki was about 50 km and very rough.  To smooth out the ride, Trustey let the air out of the tires down to 8psi.  The bouncing still shook your kishkes.  Along the road we passed wide open rolling hills  that were flows of lava from the 1783 eruption now covered with bright green bryophytes.

Sheep grazed all over this area during the summer.  This Friday will be the annual roundup of the sheep when about 35 farmers search for their sheep via horse or, now, ATV and bring them down the mountain en masse (10,000 or so) to be sorted and cared for during the winter months. We will miss this by a couple of days. 

The road was built about 20 years ago by Trustey’s father and uncle who owned a heavy equipment company in the area.  Roughing out the road took several weeks.  More recently, this area became part of the national park system in Iceland and the road was “improved” (Toby and Marty know what an improved dirt road means).  The road also required crossing quite a few streams  along the route.  This did not appear to be aproblem with our elevated jeep, but we were glad not to be driving our own Subaru Outback.  We may have drowned.

We finally reached the base of Laki Mountain at about 1800 ft.  

From here, we began the hike to the peak at 2,684 ft.  The climb was steady uphill with great 360 degree views of the bright green moss covered lava.  The lava made for great footing even though the rocks were a bit wet.

 The weather looked like it might rain any minute, but as we neared the top, the clouds broke up and the sun came out.  A line of eruption cones extended in almost a straight line from NW to SE with Laki Mountain smack in the middle.  This was the line of lava eruption during the 1783 disaster that killed off 20% of the Icelandic population and was responsible for severe abrupt weather changes across the Northern Hemisphere which led to crop failures, famine, and political upheaval.

                                                    

There are also several mountain lakes that are visible from the mountain peak. 

We descended back to the base, 

Molly freezing on the way down

and then extended our hike to climb over a small volcano and down into the cone.
                                       

As we walked through the volcanic crater, we saw lava tubes 

and large iron laden rocks that had been brought up during the eruption.  

Climbing out the other side was a bit challenging with an extremely steep wall that we had to negotiate. 

The terrain and green mosses made one feel like they were in a Lord of the Rings movie. (According to Dave, Tolkein lived here and this type of terrain was one of the inspirations for LOTR).

We took a short break for lunch, then drove to another site for a “flat walk”.  Jeri decided to make a pit stop  before we set out.  We waited for her by the jeep, about 100yd away, and waited and waited..  I started worrying that she might have been sick, so I sauntered over to the loo to see if I could help.  Through the wind, I thought I heard her calling, and when I reached the bathroom, I realized she was trapped.  The deadbolt lock wouldn’t budge!  She had been pounding on the door for several minutes, to deaf ears.  I was going to have Trustey use the come along on the truck to rip off the door when all of a sudden, Jeri’s persistence paid off.  Voila, she was out!!somehow her fiddling with the mechanism released the deadbolt and we were reunited. As usual, she was a really good sport about it and we all had a good laugh.

The hike was not at all flat (except the las t mile or so).  We climbed over the wall of the crater to a beautiful pool and then scrambled up the other side. 

We seemed to be surrounded by the green mossy rocks, making it all feel very surreal.

We made 2 other stops on our way back to Hotel Laki.  The first was at a beautiful waterfall up in the highlands. 

 

The final stop was a short (30 minute) hike to a chasm.  Unfortunately, our luck with the weather ran out here, and it began to rain.  We hightailed it back to our jeep for the ride home to our cabins in the woods.

It was a long but very enjoyable day.