Yesterday, we drove about 3 hours into the Southeast of Iceland towards the Solheimajokull Glacier. We had booked a glacier hiking tour and were instructed to meet at the parking lot by 12pm. We left a litte early so we would get a chance to stop off at the nearby waterfall in Skogar, just the sun came up. Driving through Iceland while still dark, it felt like it was 4 in the morning, when in reality it was 10am. As dark slowly turned to light, we could start to make out some of the volcanic, snow covered mountains around us.

Around 10:30, we saw another waterfall down a side road and decided to pull off of route 1 and check it out.

From here, it was about another 10 minutes down route 1 before you reach the “town” of Skogar, which consists of a hostel, a cafe, 2 houses, and a waterfall. We had to drive down a gravel road that was essentially a sheet of ice to get to the waterfall, but it was worth it

From here, another 20 minutes or so and we arrived at the parking lot for the glacier. When we all finally met up in the parking lot, they suited us up in a harness and crampons for our boots, handed us an ice ax, and off we went.

Our guide, Thurstin, was charming, adorable, patient, and knowledgable; everything you want in a tour guide. As we slowly acended up to the glacier, I looked up at a beautiful panorama of blue ice, surrounded by volcanic brown ash mountains dotted with snow.

Eventually, we made our way up to the glacier and were able to walk on the ice with our crampons. Thirstin pointed out ice cracks, crevasses, canyonne, ash mounds, and even a giant hole.