Since the weather forecast was at last promising at least a small amount of sunshine, we planned a two-day hike over Fimmvorthuhals Pass, from Skogar to Thorsmork and back. The walk passes between two of Iceland’s ice sheets, Myrdalsjokull, and the recently famous (but still unpronouncable) Eyjafjallajokull, source of that ash cloud in 2010. It’s also, supposedly, one of the best hikes in the world.
The walk starts at Skogafoss, a seriously impressive waterfall where the Skogar river plunges over a 62m lava cliff. From there we climbed up beside the river for a couple of hours, passing waterfall after waterfall, as well as some impressive gorges. Happily, the weather forecast had been right, and we got to enjoy sunshine for all of the climb.
We had lunch at the only bridge across the river, at which point the character of the landscape changed, with green mossy tundra giving way to ash, cinders, and rocks. The climb continued past a small shelter, to cross a series of snow fields, at which point it was getting noticeably colder as we’d now climbed over 1000m up the mountain. The weather also started to turn, but it was still clear as we reached the summit of the pass and started our descent.
The 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull actually started on the pass, with an impressive lava eruption from a couple of new craters, Mothi and Magni. The lava from these craters has spilled down the far side of the pass, and the path passes right past the two craters and over the brand new lava flow – some of the youngest rocks in the world! In fact, the craters and the lava flows were still steaming in places, and we warmed our hands on the hot rocks!
From the new craters the path descends very steeply to an amazingly flat plateau, Mornisheithi, by which stage it was pouring with rain. Happily that didn’t last too long as the views were amazing, with icefalls, lava falls, and steep grey ashy slopes adorned with vivid green streaks of moss.
We continued to descend along a narrow ridge on the edge of a spectacular canyon, to eventually reach the valley floor at Basar Hut in Gothaland, where we camped for the night. Thorsmork is unusual in Iceland for the fact that it is mostly covered in birch forest, although admittedly most of the trees are less than head height! The forested setting next to a huge braided river makes for a lovely place to camp.
The next day we did it all again in reverse, but the weather was strangely reversed as well, with mostly clear weather on the climb, where it had rained the day before, but rain and bitter cold on the pass and the descent back to Skogafoss. We took a slightly different route over the pass, visiting Fimmvorthuskali Hut and crossing a number of snowfields where the combination of snow, freeze-thaw and ash had produced bizarre landforms.
