Aurora, Storms, and Snowpants: An Icelandic Saga by Something Fishy, whYME, and ChAiM'l

[Something Fishy]

We live in the photoshop age.  I'm not even so sure that I'm really who I am... 

Looks like you linked from an email attachment, there's nothing showing.

(Sorry for this post, stbaum )

[Work-for-ur-muny]

The image isn't displaying

Looks like you linked from an email attachment, there's nothing showing.

(Sorry for this post, stbaum )

Sorry I only have it as an email attachment and it's too large to load as an attachment here. Any other way?

[etech0]

Sorry I only have it as an email attachment and it's too large to load as an attachment here. Any other way?

imgur

[Work-for-ur-muny]

imgur

What's that?

ETA: My filter blocks it out, so...

Any other way?

[Something Fishy]

Here we go...

[pcgeek]

Here we go...

Side by side comparison?

[Work-for-ur-muny]

Here we go...

Trip Report Part 2...


...The way a glacier works is that its own weight presses down on itself, expelling every impurity from the ice down to the molecular level. This means that the meltwater is the purest water anywhere in the world. Since the glacier forms high in the mountains and is constantly moving forward, it means that the ice which is now melting is about 400 years old - perfectly perfect, with not a trace of dirt, pollutants, or anything else.

Look at which words you left beneath the picture in question. Any coincidence...? 

[Something Fishy]

Look at which words you left beneath the picture in question. Any coincidence...? 

LOL

[VacationLover]

Nu, is the arctic / icberg water so special like the Zman puts it down? 


  So you also work in construction?...

[Dawie]

Nu, is the arctic / icberg water so special like the Zman puts it down? 
  So you also work in construction?...

Trip Report Part 2 (Link to part 1)

There are some spots where the water pours out above the surface, and we stopped to drink. Never in my life have I tasted anything like this - it was absolute heaven. I had prepared some bottles back in the RV to bring along, but of course I forgot them . I sat in an ice crevice and drank and drank and drank. The water comes out under extreme pressure, in a supercooled state. This means that it was about 25° cold and still liquid - delicious, but painful when you're using your hands as a cup . My hands were numb, but I didn't care; I simply could not stop :

---The end---

[Something Fishy]

Nu, is the arctic / icberg water so special like the Zman puts it down? 

I haven't read the article, but I'm absolutely in love with the Arctic/northern landscapes. Heading back to Iceland next month, and hopefully back to Svalbard next winter as well.

So you also work in construction?...

Lol, they make you wear that on the glacier for safety.

[Joe4007]

Lol, they make you wear that on the glacier for safety.

Not in Argentina

[Something Fishy]

Not in Argentina

I guess in Argentina they don't get sued every time someone bumps their keppela.

[Joe4007]

I guess in Argentina they don't get sued every time someone bumps their keppela.

Or they just pay off the investigator for less money than a hard hat would cost...

[Something Fishy]

Or they just pay off the investigator for less money than a hard hat would cost...

Also an option

[Something Fishy]

Back on the main road, we were struck by something which we had had not paid too much notice yesterday: there are pretty much no trees in Iceland. Sure, here and there you'll come across a stand of a couple of trees, but as a rule, there were no trees to be seen. You'd expect something like this in a desert; driving through a snowy and mountainous landscape with zero trees makes for a very weird experience.

Random fact I learned today: Iceland has so few trees, that throughout its history they burned "only" 25 witches. It simply wasn't economical .

[LoLo]

Just posting so that people don't see SF as the last poster and get excited for nothing..

Oh, and interesting random fact SF..

[Something Fishy]

[Something Fishy] The weather - for now - had quieted down.

We were still on the way to Kirkjufell. Between the weather and stopping for pictures, we hadn't even covered a third of the distance all afternoon. With another four and a half hours of driving time ahead of us, we were glad for the temporary lull in the bad weather.

There was still plenty of snow on the ground, but the driving was relatively easy and pleasant:



Approaching Vik - you could see the Reynisfjara sea stacks we shot yesterday off to the left:



Passing through town, we noticed that the large general store on the side of the road was still open. When we had passed through last night it had been closed already, so Chaim'l had been unable to see if they had a replacement for his lost gloves. He now ran inside, his frozen fingers grasping at straws. He emerged five minutes later, still gloveless ...

We had some dinner, and hit the road again. Outside town, we hit another squall; thankfully this one lasted for just short minutes:



The terrain became more mountainous again:







Another one of those long, one-lane bridges, this time at night:



And then, just as we thought that the weather is on our side again, it started to snow. Hard.

And here we thought we'll have another chance to see the aurora tonight.

We continued west, skirted the outskirts of Reykjavik, and turned north. The snow never let up.

After an hour or so of this, we pulled into a nice large gas station, where this search-and-rescue monster was being fueled up:





But best of all, the attached deli had free Wi-Fi. We sat there for a while catching up with the world and posting a teaser to DDF while the snow wound down.

Back on the road, through the Hvalfjarðargöng Tunnel (this pretty new tunnel shaves over an hour by going under Hvalfjörður Fjord instead of around it), and into Iceland's West Fjords region. By the time we were driving along Borgarfjörður, the sky was nice and clear, and we were on the lookout for auroras again. And lo and behold, there it was! A faint glimmer in the northern sky:



But we were still spoiled rotten from the night before, so we declared the display a resounding "meh" and shot some startrails around the summit of Hafnarfjall volcano instead:



Half an hour further north and we turned into the remote Snæfellsnes Peninsula, home to the legendary Snæfellsjökull volcano and its portal to the center of the earth. Here the weather - once again - turned utterly nasty (do you detect a pattern here ?). The wind picked up, the snow fell down, and we pushed on:





Finally, after hours and hours of driving, we arrived at the dirt road leading to Kirkjufell's lake and began this horrific drive:



...only to find this:



Yes, a blocked road.

Awesome.

whYME and I volunteered to hike out to scout the night's planned shoot location: the triple waterfall with Kirkjufell in the background. We geared up and set out... Or, more accurately, stumbled out. The road was on an exposed ridge, and the wind literally kept on knocking us over. Icy snow was blowing in our faces, our gear doing little to protect us. After a protracted battle with the elements, we finally reached the waterfalls. But in the beam of our headlamps we saw that it had all been for naught: the falls were frozen solid, and the entire area was covered in a couple of inches of solid ice. Even without the crazy storm going on, it would have been incredibly dangerous to attempt a shoot here.

Back to the van we struggled, where we found Chaim'l being obnoxiously warm and dry. Writing this shoot off as a bad deal, we turned around and headed for the main Kirkjufell parking lot, next to the lagoon.

It was here that we met a small group of Chinese tourists, who informed us that what we're seeing now is only the beginning of an incredibly bad storm, even by Icelandic standards. There had been travel alerts issues throughout the country, and all airports will be closed and all flights canceled until at least tomorrow afternoon.

So here we were, in a remote part of Iceland, in the throes of a violent storm, our flight the next morning most likely canceled, and no cell phone or internet service.

So we did the only logical thing: we pointed the van into the wind so that it doesn't blow over, and prepared for sleep.

[whYME] Something Fishy had about enough of the top coffin bunk the previous night so I (was) volunteered to be tonight's korbon. While Something Fishy is the clear winner in the length department, I make up for it in width. Boy was that an experience getting into that space. Let's just say a bottle of lube would've come in quite handy. Once I was in I was stuck in place and that was it, I literally did not have enough space to roll over.

[Something Fishy] Outside the storm grew wilder, but inside the camper was nice and cozy. With the snow and wind howling, we fell into an exhausted sleep.

[SrulyS]

YAY

ETA: Now that I've read it; not a very long update 

[Yehoshua]

It's always nice to see the TR hasn't been forgotten and that an SF post was actually a TR part. Thanks!