Laugavegur Hiking Trail: Day 02

Travel

Aug 11

Glaciers, rain, plumes of volcanic smoke, majestic panoramas, lakes and some river crossing… what else should I say?

FROM HRAFNTINNUSKER HUT TO HVANNGIL HUT

The one on the Hrafntinnusker is a real mountain retreat: perched in a beautiful position, built with large beams of light wood under which you sleep in sleeping bags, with a majestic panorama in front. And when I say majestic, I really mean it: in your field of vision are glaciers and plumes of volcanic smoke, and an impossible wind blows.

Starting with some heavy backpacking and a dark grey sky wasn't that great but we expected that so we just needed some warming up. Soon though rain, fog and strong wind catched us in the middle… We got a little lost because of low visibility and impossibility to use the cellphones and that made us a little nervous but our strong sense of orientation (and of course some sign on the ground) helped us find the route again luckily.

After an hour of so under strong rain, we get to the ridge of the hill and this view opened up in front of our eyes. Every pain is forgotten, thanks Iceland.

Sharp reliefs, glacial valleys, streams that still do not have a defined course, and lakes, beautiful lakes. The one just in front of us is the Álftavatn, with its valley and the hut where we will have our promised lunch.

But not before the first river crossing… Fun but glacial, literally.

From the top point the descent is pretty hard and fast, but with the constant view in front of us it was like running towards the Paradise’s Gate.

In Álftavatn they built a kind of restaurant near the shelter but, since I’ve read that is very expensive we had our incredible cous cous prepared by my personal chef Davide, yummy!

So after about 4 hours of walking and 1 hour of lunch and photos we wave our goodbye to this incredible valley to head to the next and final-for-the-day hut.

Obviously the landscape continued to be amazing and it’s really hard to choose just some picture… After half an hour we stumbled upon another incredible river, this time easier to walk-through.

The valley continues for another hour or so, pretty easy and finally sunny.

Finally, our long day of 17km from Hrafntinnusker to Hvanngil ended with a unbelievable magic land and a trail of horses riding thought. We then discover that these riders were our company in the hut and we also discovered that they ride these icelandic horses in these 400km+ adventure in the highlands, for more than 8hours a day… wow!