Hopping into our cargo van turned monster truck, with its enormous tires and hydraulics, we made our way onto the glacier, cruising along the hard-packed snow still left over from the long winter. The further we climbed, the more eerie things got, as the bright horizon became indiscernible with the glacier’s end. We came to a stop near a group of workers shoveling snow, which seemed somewhat odd given we were surrounded by snow and ice in all directions for miles. Turns out, they were digging down to expose the surface of the glacier, the thick, blue ice which our destination lay beneath. We squeezed ourselves through a small opening in the snow and made our way down into the abyss.
The transition from blinding white to a dim blue was abrupt, leaving us a bit weary as to where our next step would lead, seeing as how the glacier was anywhere between 1000 and 3000 feet thick, with plenty of never-ending crevasses scattered throughout. As our eyes adjusted, we found ourselves surrounded by walls of bright, translucent, blue. We walked underneath natural arches into pockets of light shining through the layers of ice above. Looking closely at the walls, the ice took on its own personality, with swirling waves, kaleidoscope-like patterns, and channels that looked like a bullet had been shot through. With each angle of perspective, a new pattern would emerge, or a new object buried deep in the solid walls would come into focus.
Aside from the seemingly never-ending waterfalls, Iceland contains its fair share of peculiar sights and activities. We opted for a tour of the Vatnajokull glacier (try pronouncing that) and its famous ice caves. Vatnajokull is absolutely massive, covering almost 10% of Iceland’s land mass. The ice caves are formed when summer snowmelt begins to make its way down into the giant crevasses in the glacier’s surface, forging new paths that eventually freeze in place as the winter days grow short. Each year, caving expeditions go out onto the glacier in search of what the chilly waters have created this trip around the sun. While the catchy names of these caves (Crystal, Blue Diamond, etc.) stay the same, each year a new site to explore will be revealed.
As you would expect when walking inside a glacier, our feet became properly frozen, and 20 minutes or so inside the cave was sufficient exploring time. On top of the glacier again, we explored the surface and its other-worldly environs. Looking back towards the coast, a blue and white haze settled beneath the peaks in the distance, with the sky seemingly deciding between having a bright sunny day or an ominous blizzard. We moved to another cave, this one completely dark, having almost a subway or mine-shaft type vibe as we crawled deep underneath the surface of the glacier. As if some kind of charcoal-ridden river was frozen in time, the black, iced ceiling was littered with rocks big and small. Some were half in, half out of ice, suspended above our heads and cemented into the ice like King Arthur’s sword. The surface was smooth, yet undulating, like upside-down rolling hills on a frozen tundra. Deeper we went, fully aware that there was no escaping should something go awry with the volcano in the mountains nearby. Turning around, I began my ritual of catching as many last glimpses as possible of the natural phenomenon I was leaving behind. Streaks of shiny grays and perfectly round stones inside and on the surface of the petrified ceiling, reflections of the head-lamp illuminated snow at our feet in the mirror-like sections of perfect ice above our heads. We emerged from the cave, again blinded by the light from the sky and surface, to the “normal” world, or at least as normal as an endless glacier surrounded by mountain peaks and open ocean can be.
At glacier’s end lies more surreal sights. The ever-growing lagoon at the foot of the glacier is riddled with massive icebergs that have fallen from the edge, making for a sort of eerie obstacle course in the frigid waters. Seals swim about in the lagoon, popping their heads up to check out the views and the tourists, before descending back into the depths or lounging on their own private iceberg inner tubes. The lagoon empties out into the ocean, taking with the remnants of the glaciers through a narrow inlet. Due to the currents, many of these icebergs end up washed ashore along a nearby black-sand beach. Having been cleaned of excess dirt and snow, the massive chunks of ice become pristine abstract art as they litter the beach for hundreds of yards. The “Diamond Beach” is like nothing else I’ve witnessed before, another photographer’s dream and explorer’s paradise. Every visitor finds something unique, some angle of light or peculiar shape that only their eyes will discover. The whole scene looks as though you were shrunk down to the size of an ant, then placed in a tray of sea-salt covered brownies and told to “Go for it.”
While nearly the entirety of the day was spent asking ourselves, on multiple occasions, whether this was all real, we were certain of the fact that the dark skies above us were as real as it gets, as we made a break further along the coast towards our lodging for the evening, though we were forced to again ask ourselves the same question as we watched dozens of actual reindeer grazing along the side of the road. Settling in to our digs with a couple hours of light to spare, and with clear skies, we decided to take a 30-minute drive to the nearest town to fill up on gas for our early morning start. We pulled into the un-attended gas pump with zero miles left on the odometer, just as the snowfall began to work its way up to storm status. Naturally, none of our cards worked at the machine, and cash wasn’t an option with no attendant on site, leaving us with no other option but to chance the 5-mile drive into town, which was currently being blanketed in a blizzard and pitch-dark skies. As the tire tracks in the road became more and more faint, I was comforted by the fact that at least we saw some reindeer before it was all over for us. Alas, the light of 2(!) gas stations appeared in the distance, our cards worked, and we were able to fill up what must have been the entire tank. The journey back was treacherous in and of itself, though not quite as daunting without the threat of running out of gas in the middle of the storm.
Settling into our warm room, with wall to wall windows looking directly out onto the snow-covered plain, we popped open some Icelandic gin and cheers-ed to another day of borrowed time, of adventures you just can’t make up, and the realization that it’s all become just another day in the life…