Sóljeimajökull glacier tour: Iceland trip Day 10

As a change today I went on an outing run by an organisation called "Mountain Guides". In the morning I kayaked on a lake in front of a glacier, and in the afternoon I walked on top of it.

On my map the Sólheimajökull glacier parking lot, where my "experience" was to begin, seemed close to where I was staying at Skógar, but the map had a small scale, it was 11.7 kilometres away. There being no other option I could find to arrive by 9:00 am, I had a 2 1/2 hour walk. Although I tried to hitch-hike the three cars that passed me did not stop. But do not feel sad for me, the walk was fast being on tarmac roads, and birds cries distracted me. My app detected the sound of godwits, with their long straight beaks, and common ringed plovers, with, as you might expect, a black and white ring around their neck. I also spotted oyster catchers, black headed gulls and whimbrel with their long curved beak. There were plenty of other small, unidentified brown birds eyeing me.

The melting glacier had created a lagoon in front of its snout and our group of nine was able to canoe around blocks of ice that had separated from the main body. The ice had a dusting of black ash from the 1918 eruption of Katla, as well as black ash bands not doubt from earlier events. At its surface the ice had a "jigsaw" or "crazed" quality, where bubbles of gas, expanding in the heat, created multiple fractures, which makes the ice look white. Just above the waterline, at some locations, there was blue ice, an attractive shade which is its true colour.

In the afternoon we donned helmets, harnesses and crampons, picked up an ice axe, and walked onto the glacier. We saw crevasses (deep cracks in the ice caused by the centre of the glacier moving faster than the sides), deep drains (where water had melted the ice to create a very deep hole) and dirt cones (an accumulation of ash insulated a patch of ice so that it melted more slowly than that surrounding it, ultimately creating a cone). We listened to the guide's explanations while tramping around the glacier pressing our crampons firmly into the ice on each step as instructed.

All in all a most instructive and fun day.

Canoeing in front of the glacier. 

Climbing onto the glacier. 

Looking down from glacier, the lagoon and river in the distance, then the front of the glacier where the black ash has been concentrated as the glacier has melted, and in the foreground, whiter ice higher up