Iceland Volcano Hike to Fimmvörðuháls: As Awesome as it Sounds

Iceland is made for active travelers.
For nature lovers.
For those who don’t need big cities, bright lights (Northern Lights being an exception) and taxis.

Of course you can enjoy the unique landscape from a tour bus or get lost in the many museums of the city, but if you want to peer down on the Earth in childlike awe, well  you can’t do better than the hiking! From little hills, which feel like mountains to Floridians, to glaciers, to volcanoes, you can quiet literally hike it all solo or with a guide.Since our first hike was one that involved tackling some challenging areas, I reached out to Arctic Adventures after seeing the amazing places they takes guests. I could tell this was more than just a quick tour bus ride and a little walk up a hill…this was a pack extra water and layers in case you need to camp kind of hike.

Initially I had selected a hike that was roughly 8 hours long and a 4 out of 5 on their difficulty scale. Having done A LOT of hikes and active tours over the years, I tend to take tour scales and chop it in half…Ummm that is not the case here. They are very accurate on the level of difficulty to expect.

Due the crazy change in plans that delayed our trip a week, this hike was no longer offered because technically winter was setting in! With shorter day light hours and the potential for quickly changing weather it just wasn’t possible.

I pouted.

Seriously I did, then I looked at more of what they had to offer and realized that hey maybe this 5-6 hour hike to Fimmvörðuháls would be just as fun. It was only 3 out of 5 so maybe too easy, but worth a shot.Well you know the saying that things always happen for a reason…yeah our trip got moved for a reason, so we would survive the hike I selected! Sometimes it really helps to read all the details they provide and to know that “hard” for a cruise ship tour is not the same as a country that thrives on wilderness living.

“Please note that this trip is demanding and the condition can be hard at times in Þórsmörk. We expect clients on this trip to be dressed accordingly and have good hiking shoes. ”

It was long and very steep with some technical parts, but didn’t involve actual climbing, rappelling or ice picks which would take it up to the next level.

I could not be happier that we selected Artic Adventures for this! My biggest issue was picking which tour sounded best and then wishing we had time to do another like mountain biking {ok fine David would have had to do that alone}.

• Provided hiking boots when they noticed our trail running shoes {guess they aren’t enough for climbing a glacier}
• Provided a guide that was hilarious, kind, thoughtful and full of energy
• Clearly a knowledgeable team as we watched them set up another group heading out for an overnight hike

Fimmvörðuháls Hike

Enough with the details schmetails, already, let’s get down to what you really want to know…the hike that blew my mind apart at the seems.

Here’s the crazy part, before I can even tell you about the hike, I have to tell you about the drive to get there because that was part of the insane adventure. We left hotel at 7 am and returned at 11:30 pm…yes it was a very, very long amazeballs day. The tour wasn’t supposed to be that long, so you’ll have to read on to find out the confluence of goofy things that extended our day.

After we picked up everyone, the group transferred to a MONSTER van. I can’t think of any other way to describe it. It’s a conversion van with monster truck wheels and this is SO NORMAL for the tour guides because of the roads that we traverse. {This picture really doesn’t do it justice, so look at future posts for more!}After turning off the paved road, we start in on the real journey. It’s not a gravel road it’s a completely made up road of massive boulders and streams to ford. In fact, most of the time I couldn’t quiet figure out how he knew what was the road…I think it was more a matter of which areas had slightly smaller boulders or less running water!
And this leads us to the first slow down of our trip…a fellow tourist out exploring thought his RAV 4 was a bit hardier than it was and thus found himself on this road in a pile of trouble. Our guide wasn’t allowed for insurance reasons to pull him out, but came up with some ideas and called for assistance (mind you we are 3 hours from civilization). Luckily another monster vehicle arrived and we headed out on our merry way.

After 45 minutes on the craziest road ever we arrived…alone. Yup not a single other car or person, tour, nada was around! I slipped in the provided boots and immediately realized they were MASSIVELY over sized and weighed about 10 lbs per foot. All part of the adventure.It was now Noon, an hour behind schedule, but we set off and the time no longer mattered.

What mattered instead was that I didn’t trip over my massive boots, and roll down the side of the mountain from the weight of my jaw hanging open.

No matter how many photos I share you’ll never fully grasp it until you’re surrounded by 360 degrees of emerald green mountains, listening to the sound of water rushing down a stream from the glacier you can see in the distance and knowing that you are walking straight on up and in to the fog over the mountain peak.
Our guide was lovely with tons of information that he freely shared, from helping us pick blueberries along the trail to tails of why wearing jeans on a hike in Iceland is NO GO. I loved that he moved at a quick pace and then stopped at different points for us to get great photos, slow and plodding is not my style.

Even though the tour ran super long, he never once tried to get us to turn back or shortchange us from what we paid for (though we’d probably never have known the difference!).

Now why was our tour going so long…oye vey.

One of the women in our group proclaimed herself as someone who had guided hiking tours through the mountains in India…but here she wanted to go slow and take her time. Not a big deal, except her version of slow was very slow and the group kept moving and chatting without realizing she’d fallen behind. When we stopped for lunch it should have been clear this just wasn’t the hike for her, instead our French woman unleashed fury on everyone for being uncaring and people who throw money around, while she had saved for ages to come. OHHH you bet this raised some ire in the group of men who had been saving for 10 years to do this as their 50th birthday and the young couple who had been saving for years as well.

Unfortunately we hadn’t even reached the hard part of the hike.

The guide apologized profusely and made her stay directly behind him for the remainder of the tour, often holding her hand as she refused to go through some of the more challenging parts.

So yes this turned a 5 hour hike in to  7.5 hour hike filled with  her non-stop berating of the group, the hike, life…yes even when we passed other hikers she stopped them to talk all about us…good times. You’ll likely not be surprised to hear that we all first made attempts to sooth her, to apologize and then eventually to avoid her like a bad case of Montezuma’s revenge.

That aside are you seeing these photos!!! This hike literally covered every imaginable type of landscape at once…we were moving through lush green mountains, then through barren land that looked we all supposed like the moon, then through snow, then through volcanic ash.

Incredible!!!

The Volcanic ash you see above was the wickedest part for me. It’s ash, hence soft and powdery so climbing up took some balance, but coming down meant simply allowing yourself to SLIDE. YIKES!
The area we were climbing in at the top is where the 2010 volcano erupted that disrupted air traffic across Europe. The top layer was cool enough for us to walk on, but the lava actually puts out heat for up up to 30 years!

There was a small hole letting off heat and man did it feel amazing after being soaked to the bone during the last hour of our hike (hey we were climbing through clouds!). The 3 French girls in their 20’s with us brought smurf marshmallows and had hoped to roast them, but the guide put the kabosh on that and instead we all chowed down and gathered for a group photo to celebrate our final victory…. well minus the French woman who sat down on a boulder just prior to the peak and refused to move. Descending David and I both spent time chatting with various members of the group. It was so interesting to hear their stories! The 3 UK guys who had been saving for years to do an adventure trip for their 50th and had to pick somewhere their wives wouldn’t want to go, had already been white water rafting and ice caving before this hike.

Then there was the couple from Slovenia ( now I need to go there) and Germany who meet because he had the balls to randomly give her his business card in a restaurant. Finally, a young woman on her own from the UK who had simply decided she needed a long weekend and since Iceland was just a 2 hour flight, there she was.

I was able to Periscope from the mountains so here’s a little video look around during our descent.

Reaching the parking lot, I stripped off my boots like a man in the dessert trying to find relief. Within seconds of slipping in to my running shoes, I was skipping and running about the parking lot as though I hadn’t just been working hard for the last 7 hours.

Luckily it’s a whacky group of people that spend their vacation working this hard, so they laughed and started to joke about my running the road back… as I kept skipping we all stated to think I might just do it. Were it not for the massive streams it’s safe to say I’d have tried!

It turns out I would not have been alone!

On our boulder drive back out we came across two backpackers who are also stranded by the same stream that had sidelined the RAV. Again our guide wasn’t allowed to give them a lift, but spent some time giving them ideas on what they could do instead…besides cry which would have been my option.

You might think that’s it there couldn’t possibly be more….but on the drive back it was hours later than normal, yet our guide once again proved he was amazing by pulling over for us to get a great view of the Northern Lights (checkout posts below for a better viewing another night).
READ MORE
Since I know not everyone wants to read every detail of our insanely amazing out of this world trip, I divided it up in to a number of posts:

Iceland Overview: Food, Fun Facts and More
Blue Lagoon: What to Expect
Driving the Golden Circle Day 1: Snowmobiling
Driving the Golden Circle Day 2: Geyser’s and Waterfalls
Reykjavik Off The Beaten Path
Reykjavik What to See + Esjan Hike (still in progress!)

Have a friend who loves to travel?? I’d ADORE it if you pinned this image!

All right that is a serious amount of writing that I managed to crank out this week because I am so passionate about sharing this incredible experience and why I love active travel.

What’s the best place you have ever hiked?

What do you love reading about when it comes to travel?

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