Brennisteinsalda
There are a good number of shorter trails at Landmannalaugar and we're planning on one of those. Our plan is up Brennisteinsalda ("Sulfur Wave") and back. First, the Laugahraun, a major lava flow that ends right at the valley. The lava flowed, hardened, and crested over itself over and over again ending in a massive black wall. Only the aerial map of this hraun does it justice. It's raw. We begin on a trail that skirts along its southern edge, up and along the Brennisteinsöldukvísl stream. The massive mountains on the south side and indeed that surround the entire area are every color of ochre possible. Even a green, as we first began the trail and enter Grænagil ("Green valley") it is not misnamed, the slopes up the mountain side are stained green. This is the beginning of the Laugavegurinn trail we're on, and it's snaking through the edge of the hraun on a trail up and and the boulders. Which are not rough to the touch, but smooth, and on a blue day like today, they reflect the color of the sky and are blue black. It's obsidian. I'm amazed! Huge glass obsidian boulders. Had they not weathered, edges could be sharp as knives. By pounding a black stone with much large one, sheering off a piece just right, it had a sharp edge as if one.
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| Obsidian blocks in the hraun |
We climb higher into the hraun and it ends at the base of the Brennisteinsalda. To remind one that this is still an actively volcanic area, at the base of the mountain is a crater steaming sulfurous fumes.
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| Sulfurous fumes at a crater at the edge of Brennisteinsalda |
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| Laugarhaun obsidienne/wikicommons |
We take a path to the top from its southeast shoulder. It's a steeper climb. It was a bit of high altitude airlessness for one of us and there was an unfazed 10 or 12 year old girl with us, but we were all determined and successful and rewarded with fantastic views, of the surrounding rhyolite mountains, ancient volcanoes eroded to their roots and now in brilliant ochre colors, the blue black obsidian hraun covered in green moss, Landmannalaugar and the valley beyond. It's quite impressive up there.
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| Landmannalaugar and Jökulgilskvísl river valley, the Landhraun in the middle distance and me at the top of Brennisteinsalda. Amazing! The nearest stream braid left and just under the hraun is the warm water open-air spa. |
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| Proof the above isn't a stock photograph of Brennisteinsalda. Left below, the green Nármakvíl marsh; center, the Landhraun and Landmannlaugar. |
To the east is Bláhnjúkur, "Blue Mountain", and countless rhyolite
peaks of ancient volcanoes, and their many ochre colors.
peaks of ancient volcanoes, and their many ochre colors.
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| Mossy Landhraun, flank of Bláhnjúkur and ochre rhyolite slopes surrounding us. |
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| Chris 73/wikicommons |
There are hundreds of photographs of Landmannalaugar that are far better than mine! Landmannalaugar from Flickr's Creative Commons.
After a time, we hike down a narrow ridge on the north slope and down into a marshy bog and meadow green and flowering, the Nármakvísl stream runs through this, and then we're up again onto the Laugahraun and it was a straight east trail back.
In the end Bjarni told us he was very happy to have his group able to make that climb! We couldn't have been happier ourselves, the view and hike were the best.(Less stamina in the other group, or in its guide, or both. My krónur on the guide having less.)
The "laugar" in Landmannalaugar
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Relaxing in the Landmannalaugar hot springs. I was there crowded with several dozen persons. Very popular these hot water springs! |
Back on the "F", it's not far at all for another out-of-the-jeep photo stop to look down into an inverted crater lake named Ljótipollur or "Ugly Pool". I got out of the jeep, lookt at the lake, and promptly threw up. The near vertical 250 meter slopes are rich stains of dried-blood red and black with nauseous fluorescent green moss. The geology: this is called a maar, where magma rising comes into contact with groundwater (or permafrost) and the resulting steam generated creates a violent outward explosion, in this case, creating this exceptionally revolting crater! (The violence of the explosion is relative: here we have a maar, a lake-filled crater. Other "phreatic" explosions can cause an entire volcano to explode, e.g., Mount St Helens and Krakatoa.) In any case, the place was effing creepy, and I couldn't wait to be on the "F" again.
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| FruityFred/2011 |
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| SAGT/flickr |
On the way to Landmannalaugar, the very dangerous Hekla volcano was shrouded by a cloud and no idea of its size could be had and on the main road back to Hvolsvöllur, Hekla was still under a cloud. It was only when I was on Heimaey and atop Eldfell there, that a perfectly clear blue day gave me a perfect view of it. It's one massive mountain. I didn't take a picture of a cloud so I'm not going to conclude with a real photo either.
Great sheep roundups
Bjarni tells us of the great sheep roundups in September, when all the sheep on the island are herded down from the pastures. It's a big job and many non-farmers join the shepherds and farmers and take part in this country-wide endeavor lasting a week. On horse-back, which counts me out. (Horses are evil.) I heard this story several more times by Icelanders, they quite enjoy these few days off from their jobs to be in the wild. (I've since discovered that you can become a "real Icelander" and spend upwards of $2000 for a week riding on a horse to help to round up and corral the sheep.) A few weeks later, another roundup for the sheep misst the first time around, and maybe another again. I honestly couldn't imagine it, retrieving all those sheep from the highest slopes, so high they can go no higher themselves, they're just under the cliffs at the mountain tops. They're all herded and segregated by their ear mark, notches of different shapes cut into the ears, a bit nauseating task come to think of it. I thought one only used paint or tattoos. One can't use paint on sheep raised for its wool. I have an animal tattoo kit at home for a reason and several tattoos myself, apropos of nothing.
Back in Hvolsvöllur
Here we're back and exhausted still alive thanks to our guide Bjarni, who made this excursion to Landmannalaugar one that we'll all remember as one of the best we had. Speaking for all of us.
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| The South Iceland Adventures headquarters in Hvolsvöllur with one of their jeeps parkt in front. I wasn't exaggerating about the size of the tires on these jeeps. |
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This is a ridiculously funny but clever video how to get from Landmannalaugar base camp to the summit of Brennisteinsalda. Basically the same route we took!
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Addendum
Bárðarbunga, 21 Aug 2014
There is a nation-wide orange alert: the volcano Bárðarbunga, under the Vatnajökull icecap is the locus of well over 1000 earthquakes in just several days. It's a volcano in the far northwest corner of the icecap, is Iceland's second largest mountain, and though the evacuation area is limited to the north side of the icecap, the danger of course is a massive ash cloud again, should it erupt underneath the icecap, and a volcanic eruption under any icecap may likely form a jökullhlaup, a massive flood. An eruption of lava from fissures outside of the icecap would produce an entirely different event.
But I recognized the name Bárðarbunga immediately; I was looking just the day before about the geology and creation of the Laugahraun lava flow in the 1400s, and discovered that it was related to an eruption of this same volcano, and the related fissures that extend 200km to the southwest, towards the Torfajökull icecap. I'll leave it to you to read. It's not that complicated ;-) It's fascinating how a volcano and related fissure swarms, and water and ice combine forces to create Iceland, but how vulnerable we are world-wide too. As it happens, the maar Ljótipollur was created by the same forces that created the Laugahraun. Now, things do become complicated!
With all the drama, I was askt pointedly, if I wasn't glad to be back home. Read my very last post.
Bjarni comes to fetch us around 4, perhaps he's anxious to get back at a reasonable hour, and it's NEI! just five more minutes! on our faces when he tells us we-have-to-head-on-back....That anguished look he had, us behaving like children (or maybe me behaving...) Get out of the water! Actually, he wasn't really that cruel or brutal about it. NOW!
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