Two Mad Women Hike to the Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland
In driving rain and 50-plus mph winds
Our rented electric Kia is sitting on a plain of volcanic rubble as we suit up inside for extreme weather. When I jump out to fetch some boots from the trunk, the howling wind presses my boxy rain parka so forcefully into my side that it reveals the flaws in my figure. Needles of sideways rain strike my cheeks.
I return to the quiet of the car interior and mull the idea of soaking in the nearby balm of the Blue Lagoon instead of hiking in these conditions to see what the locals simply call “The Eruption.” But it’s the last full day of our week in Iceland and we both know this is it: our one chance in life to witness the angry effluence of Earth’s molten interior flowing in its red-hot glory down a mountainside toward the ocean. And anyway, a Reykjavik graduate student we’d met in a hot spring a few days ago made the trek sound like a cakewalk. Bulldozers, she’d said, had practically ground out a road where before only a trace of trail had existed. Apparently, she’d gone on a nicer day than this one.
We’ve been friends since our now-grown kids were in pre-school, doing mom things like baking cupcakes and supervising fingerpainting. Now we’re trudging like astronauts across a landscape that only reveals its other-worldly nature when wind gusts blow away the penetrating mist.
When we cross the road and actually begin the hike, we realize we’ve got company. Lots of it. Young Icelanders donning the latest 66N outdoor gear. Overweight American tourists talking too loudly and wearing Spandex leggings. British chaps in sensible boots and slickers. Two men of unknown provenance wearing inexplicable business attire that is soaked within the first hundred yards. All of which fuels our misconceptions about both the nature and distance of this hike.
We’re heading upward and toward a bend we believe will take us to a viewing spot. After the bend we can barely make out a diagonal gash in a distant cindercone, perhaps bearing one or two bright figures. “I hope we don’t have to go up that,” I say. But we really do, on a trail carved into the side of a steep slope of black cinders. Rivulets of sludge flow beneath our boots. And the alarming gash is only the first of a series of steep inclines we must travel to get to the view, in air that is increasingly sulfurous. We are chatting with an older pair of American chums when a curve in the path reveals a second steep slope. From here we catch a tiny obstructed glimpse of a far-away lava river. The older pair decide that this is good enough to call it a day and turn around.
Not us. We press on with a fast-diminishing group of intrepid souls who ascend false peak after false peak. At one point we spot in the distance three people possibly roasting marshmallows hard by the edge of a lava field that is still glowing. Eventually we reach dark and undulating plain. Now the trail is replaced by a sequence of white wooden poles planted at intervals to indicate the route across the sooty cinders. Depending on the wind, which has been strong-arming through the mist, sometimes we see them and sometimes we don’t. Then we round another bend and are nearly blown off our feet. The only option for us and the handful of others scattered within eyeshot is to wait crouched on hands and knees until batshit crazy gusts diminish to just plain nuts.
I’m questioning the wisdom of continuing, but there are still people traveling upward above us, and people coming down who are still alive. We never thought we’d have to hike this far but here we are, and we must almost be there. So up we continue, periodically grabbing for dear life onto the white poles or planting our butts on the cinders when the when the gusts threaten to blow us into oblivion. The sulfurous stench has by now thoroughly penetrated my sinuses which are objecting mightily. This is especially unfortunate because the tissues in my leaky raincoat pockets are now useless sodden lumps. TMI, but a farmer fling goes impressively whipping 15 feet downwind.
The neon green vest alerts us that the man talking to us is an Icelandic SAR official. He warns us to limit time on the uppermost plateau because toxic gases are accumulating there today. This offers hope that we are close, but we’re not.
The slope is getting steeper and rockier, the wind — if you can imagine it — is blowing even harder and we’re becoming increasingly doubtful when a cheerful British hiker who is on her way down urges us on. It’s the classic “you’re almost there,” that any seasoned hiker knows could mean anything. As if we were unaware, she warns us about the wind. By now we’ve invested far too much to stop and neither one of us wants to be the one to sensibly call it a day.
And finally a wind gust that again drops us onto our knees clears the mist and we spot them. Red hot rivers raging downhill like class 5 whitewater rapids, their edges turning black before our eyes. It’s an alien vision that leaves us gaping. We’re on top of a volcanic cone that is blessedly just wide enough that it seems we might not be blown off. As the wind continues its assault, the view appears, disappears, then appears again. I open my jacket to retrieve my camera and the hat I’d stashed goes sailing on a gust. In a small miracle, my friend who is 20 feet away catches it. “We’re bad ass!” I shout to her above the din. “Yes we are!” she shouts in reply.
She records two short videos with her iPhone. I catch only a few shots with my DSLR before the lens is impossibly coated with rain drops. For another moment we stare, mesmerized, then turn around to get the hell out of there.
In all, we hike 6 miles. Despite our raingear, we are soaked to the skin. But we are oh so happy to have witnessed what few others ever will. Happy, that is, until dinner at a Reykjavik restaurant that night, when a young American couple overhears us recounting our day. “Did you see it spurting out the top?” the overly perky woman asks us. “It was fountaining when we were there.”
I wanted to smack her.
The young Icelandic man working at the rental car return later told us you could see the lava shooting skyward all the way from Reykjavik when the eruption first started, in March. He’s hiked it since, and acknowledged it as a tough climb. “I was a Viking,” he said, “and just pushed forward.”
From Reddit posts I should have checked before the hike, I’ve since learned that the volcano spurts upward roughly every 15 minutes, reliable like Old Faithful. Not that we could have stayed that long on top the day we went. As it was, the sulfur stayed in my head for hours after the hike. Those raging streams of lava were indeed impressive (eight days after our hike yet another lava river overtook our trail and shut it down), but I don’t think I’ve completely crossed this item off my bucket list after all. Truth is, I’m just going to have to go back.
