Fimmvörðuháls – the best day walk money can’t buy

This walk certainly goes down as my favourite day hike ever. It was a longish walk (23km), starting at the campsite by the Skogafoss waterfall. It’s simply waterfall after waterfall after waterfall (22 of them) all the way up to the eruption site (more on that later – first, some pictures)

Then the landscape changes dramatically to being stark and barren (and damn cold, I definitely didn’t wear enough warm clothes on this hike). You’re sandwiched between the Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull glaciers. Yes, that’s the Eyjafjallajökull which nuked air traffic over Europe back in 2010. We did see some bikers here crossing over the ice. They’d been driven up (there a 4wd track part of the way up, which you mostly get to ignore when walking), and then did what turned out to be really a very short ride. I doubt it was really worth the effort to be honest.

When Eyjafjallajökull first erupted, it did so at two smaller fissure craters, called Móði and Magni. There’s quite a nice diagram here of where the various vents are. Anyway, it was a welcome stop, as even now, 4 years later, the earth is still _hot_ (and steaming). A great way to warm up cold hands!!

Then the scenery changes dramatically again as you drop down into Godaland (Gods land – and you can see why, (S)He has a taste for the dramatic!). Absolutely beautiful. We actually hadn’t planned on making it down the other side, as we hadn’t realised that there were twice-a-day connecting busses from the other side. Fortunately we met a German couple on the hike, and they told us about it… very handy, as it would have been a shame to miss it.

You can see track work (volunteers) being done above too. Great place to come and help out for a while.

Got back via one of those beasty Mercedes busses at about 10pm. So a long day (the busses take their time..) but what an absolutely excellent day walk.