Iceland!!!!! Trekking, Thorsmork

The Laugavegur trail ends in Thorsmork (translation: "Thor's Place.") As we did at the start in Landmannlauger, we spent a couple of days hiking around the area before heading back to Reykjavik. Unlike the start with it's sleety windy wintry mix, it was mostly gloriously beautiful.

The main adventure was a 14 mile out and back from the valley floor to the top of Magni and Modi. These are the two new mountains created in 2010 with the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (remember when flights in Europe were canceled for weeks?) and getting to the top took much climbing (~1,000 meters) on some challenging trails.

Looking back at the Thorsmork valley from ~a quarter of the way up.

One section, "The Cat's Spine," is a narrow path perched atop a ridge with steep cliffs on both sides. I was not above climbing on hands and knees for a couple spots. Nearer to the top was what translated to "The Steep Snowy Bit."  It was steep and snowy (go figure?) and slippery and mentally challenging for those, like me, with some fear of heights.

Although we had abundant sunshine for most of the day, the weather in Iceland is fickle. When we got to the top of the mountain it had turned cold and extremely windy. Our guide was concerned about lingering too long so we spent just a moment up top before hustling down. Pretty quickly the weather turned again and we were able to enjoy a pleasant descent.

On the way down our guide asked if we were interested in a little detour. The week had tired some people out. The heights had stressed a couple others. There were rumblings of wanting to get back to camp. Since our guide had a track record of amazing detours and WE WERE IN ICELAND I was pretty enthusiastic and vocal about doing the detour.

Worth it.

Most of our traveling buddies were awesome people but by this point in the adventure we were okay with some time apart. The way back to camp was well marked, danger of being lost minimal and fear of predators (human or otherwise) was, literally, non existant.  So we hung back, let the others rush back to camp, and had some nice quiet time in the sunshine and splendor of Thorsmork.