A Fed Bear Is A Dead Bear: Jokusarlon

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Jokusarlon to Vik

The next morning, we awoke to more icebergs floating around, sunny skies, and warmer weather it seemed. After breakfast, we headed towards Skaftafell park, and started a hike there, which Dave knew to be a good one. It turned out to be an awesome hike, but we were hit with some rain off and on, and low clouds. We climbed from about sea level to 900 meters up, so it was another climbing day, which tired us out in a good way. The hike went past more awesome waterfalls, marshy areas, gigantic and daunting cliffs, the tongue of a glacier, and ultimately to the peak of that area. It was a looping hike too, which was awesome, and ended up being about a 6 hour hike, so we were glad we had lunch with us. This park was our first park with many other people hiking, but once we got past the initial mile or so, we barely saw anyone.

View from up on a small peak, looking at the lake and our tents (bottom left area)

Closer view to the tents

Buenos dias

Morning walk

Selfies

best morning teeth brushing you could ask for

The hike first passed Svartifoss waterfall and basalt columns

And then onward and upwards

We got pretty wet in some areas

We were in and out of the low clouds, which was pretty eerie at times

We eventually made it up to the peak of those two big guys, maybe higher? Can't remember

We ate lunch at this point, which had some scary dropping cliffs, and was only about halfway up as high was we went

The top! Above the clouds

Jaylah standing near another daunting cliff, which we couldn't even see the bottom of

On the way back down, we got to hike along the ridge overlooking a tongue of the glacier

After Skaftafell, we were pretty beat, and went ahead and took advantage of their campground cooking facilities. But then we continued on the road a bit to find a spot to camp for the night. We stopped off in Vik, and checked out the beach and some rocks called the "Three Trolls", and even saw some good waves. We didn't see anywhere to camp there, so we drove a little bit further and found a nice spot for the night.

Three Trolls

Seydisfjordur to Jokusarlon

In the morning, we headed over to the north side of the fjord in Seydisfjordur for a hike we'd read about. The trail followed a river up a valley, past countless waterfalls in the river, and countless waterfalls coming down into the valley. This was without a doubt, my favorite hike I have now done (Matt). We made it up into the snowline and were eventually crossing over snow patches that we knew had small streams running under and out of the snow patches, but they were safe enough still. The trail was supposed to end at a large lake, but after about 2.5 hours of hiking up, we were beat, and didn't make it up to the lake. Regardless, every step of this trail was awesome. On our way back down, we happened to be greeted by some horses! Mel and Jessica were ecstatic, as were Dave and I. The Icelandic horses are a bit smaller than the typical horses, and super cute because of it.

View across the fjord, towards where we camped the night before

Start of hike

View along the trail - lots of these photos...

Waterfalls galore

No need to bring water, just drink when you're thirsty!

Waterfalls everywhere you looked

Excited on this hike

Along the hike - there will be lots of these...

Good golly

No caption

Getting closer to the top

Our view from the top - after hiking maybe 2.5 hours, and about 500 meters higher than sea level

Near the top, rain was moving in

We were treated to an awesome rainbow on our way back down

Icelandic horses!

He is interested

Ecstatic

We headed south, and had a nice pit stop a this beach area

Not a bad place to live

We made it to Jokusarlon by 10 or 11 PM, not sure, but it was an unbelievable sight! A glacier feeds into Jokusarlon Lake, and icebergs basically float around in it for a while, and slowly drift out the mouth of the lake and into the ocean. This was easily one of most dramatic sights we'd seen. Matt actually heard and saw a large iceberg break off another iceberg, and flip upside down and start drifting towards the ocean. The color blue of the bottom of these icebergs is almost fake looking; it's so vibrant. The lake is huge, so we ended up driving only a short bit more, and camping near the edge of this lake, which obviously made for yet again, another awesome, secluded camping spot.