30th Oct (Sat) - Iceland Day 5

I almost woke up late this morning. Too tired from last night. After gobbling down 2 muffins, I donned on my thermal, ski pants plus extra clothing, and waited anxiously for the pick-up. Today, I shall attempt my first glacier hike. The venue? Sólheimajökull glacier.

As the guide veered the vehicle into the parking lot, some distance away from the base of the glacier, I could hear the wind howling outside. And there was the eerie sight as well. It looked as though we were caught in the middle of a sandstorm and yet the distant glacier remained undisturbed by the chaos around us.

I battled against the wind to put on the crampons and gaiter (with help from the 2 guides). But from time to time, the sand would get into my eyes and impeded my motions. Just as I got it out, another would get in again. The wind chill was simply horrid. Even the guides said we were pretty unlucky to meet with such strong winds on such a nice day.

When everyone was ready, we began our hike. I was kinda expecting to tread through snow but nope, it was layers and layers of ice all the way up. So, I had to stomp my feet real hard into the ice so that I could get a good grip and not fall flat or worse still, fall backwards and slide into one of the sinkholes. Tried as I might, I still felt light-footed. And it doesn't help that the wind was so chilly and so strong that at times, it would threw me off a step and slightly off balance. I felt like I was ready to be blown away.



And so, as per usual, the timid me got real scared once more. The guides took notice of it(and also because I had informed them of my rib injury earlier) and began taking turns to lead me by hand so that I could get a better grip on myself. I then asked the guide if anyone had ever been blown away by the wind. He said "nope, not at all." And then I thought to myself "great... sekali i'm the 1st one."

And I'm not sure if it was sheer lack of stamina or if it was the altitude plus my rib injury, I would pant every now and then as we slowly made our way up. All other fellow trekkers were first timers as well, though most of them had at least done mountain trekking before. They were quite steady and at times, even offered me their hands or asked if I was okay, when the guides had to attend to something or someone else. That was extremely nice and kind of them. I was glad for the attention. REALLY.

We would cross the ragged and sometimes frail ridges so that we could lean our bodies forward to catch a glimpse of the sinkholes pretty up-close. And of course, one of the guides would be standing at the edge of the ridge to hold on to us, one by one, so that we wouldn't fall into it accidentally and sayonara forever. But I was feeling scared for the guide (scared that he would fall inside) and awe at the same time. How do these guys do it???





My hands were either too shaky or too cold that I hardly took pictures of the glacier or the sinkholes. Psychologically, I felt that my hands were super important in case I got blown away by the wind or if the ice below me collapsed. So I would rather use my hands to hold the spike and not the camera.

And on the wind again - there was this strong wind blowing constantly. But every few seconds, a gust of even stronger wind would come and I would (plus some other fellow trekkers who felt the same) lose my balance and immediately felt the need to plunge my spike into the ice for support. If you were into watching chinese period drama, it would be like Swordman A releasing his Xiang Long Shi Ba Zhang and the opponent would plunge his sword into the earth, grit his teeth with all his might and fight against that power blast. Yah. It's kinda a weird scenario but that was kinda what I felt when I was battling those sudden gusts.

The original plan was to have our sandwiches (our lunch) on top of the glacier but that had to be canned because of the strong wind. Even the guides had a difficult time trying to find a suitable sinkhole for our ice climbing session. The wind was simply too strong.

In the end, they settled on a smaller sinkhole closer to the base for us to attempt ice climbing. But I had to bow out because of (1) it looked so slippery that I was scared and (2) more importantly, I had to keep in mind my rib injury. There was no way I could swing the axes hard enough to secure a good grip on the ice to pull myself up. And out of the 11 trekkers (excluding the guides), only 3 made it back up on their own.

As we gradually made our way down, back to the pick-up, the wind was blowing behind me as I felt like I was pushed to move forward, real fast. Then one of the guides took my hand and slowly led me down. Along the way, he kept chanting like he would to a kid to stomp my feet like a huge teddy bear. That was quite funny so I couldn't help but laughed at it while feeling nervous at the same time.

And here's a pix of one of the guides chiseling steps out of the ice for us to get down.



By the time we got back to the pick-up, I was very certain that this would be the one and only time that I attempted glacier hike. Once was more than enough to last me a lifetime. Ha.

All of us were super hungry and munched on our sandwiches like greedy bears. Mine had cucumber and lettuce in it, so I took extra time to pick them out before munching in whilst the guides continued the long drive back to town.

I didn't have the time to rest either when I was back in the hostel. Since my northern lights chase failed last night, tonight would be my only chance to catch it in Iceland before I leave. 'Coz according to weather forecasts, it would get very cloudy from tomorrow on and the chance of seeing the lights then would basically be zero.

So I decided to sign up for the Northern Lights tour (4900 ISK) from Iceland Excursions at my hostel reception, headed out to the hotdog stall closest to my hostel, grabbed 2 hotdogs and was on my way out again.

The guide on board told me that tonight, we would only have 20% chance of seeing it. But it's better than none since the days ahead would be too cloudy for any chase to happen. And I got lucky. Got to see the faint, white Northern lights some minutes past 10pm. It wasn't as grand as I thought it would turn out but I have to count my blessings nevertheless, to even see one. :) When the lights were first spotted, the driver was even more excited than the passengers. Hahahha.

I tried to capture it on my GF1 but it simply refused to work. Then I had to peel off my gloves in the freezing cold environment, to try and adjust the aperture and etc in the dark. I couldn't see what I was doing and I got so fed up with it that I gave up and just concentrated looking at the lights through my own eyes. In scenarios like this, I blame the camera.