Thunderboxes of Our Planet: Iceland 3

Maintaining the Longdrop

1. Inspect the Longdrop

2. If full, roll over and cap the drop zone.

3. Excavate new drop zone.

4. Position Longdrop over new hole and paint with weather proof paint.

5. Opening ceremony - cut ribbon and take inaugural dump.

A Week in May

Being an impressionistic scrapbook of photos, not all of great quality, taken during a week in May 2015.

Breakfast at Kex

Planning

Site visit to Glymur,

in spring sunshine, but everywhere still looking brown and wintry.

Quick look at the view outside the workshop...

...then a longer look at the view inside. Alert readers of this blog will notice a pile of steel treads which by now should be on Eldborg, but which remain here despite a second attempt at installation earlier this month (again snowed off).

Getting equipment ready for the coming season.

Jazz at Kex

Site visit to Dyrholaey, where Darwin Award candidates dick about on the cliff edge, even dangling their legs over it ...

...despite the cliff having recently fallen in, taking some of the path with it. A year or two back, a couple were on a section  which fell in a similar collapse. Miraculously, the landslide was arrested by a ledge before it reached the bottom and they survived.

A little church...

...with some lovely singing inside

Travel to Hólar, 370-odd km north of Reykjavik.

 

Hólar in Hjaltadalur was the Epicopal See for Northern Iceland from the early 12th century. Its schools and education date back to that time. Today the university college specialises in equestrianism, fishery and tourism.

No matter how high...

....the intellectual standard soars,

WhysWhys takes it to a whole new level.

Practical fieldwork: boardwalks through a wetland area.

Stone work: step building and path repair on a hiking trail.

A northern paradise: Hólar has its own micro brewery and pub. WhysWhys has been known to get lost on the way home from here despite it only being 200m.

Silly things to do at the BBQ

Back in Reykjavik, time for a Kexburger :-)

Pictures by WhysWhys, Rene Biasone and Kjartan Bollason.

The Most Dangerous Job

Memorials to British Fishermen on Reykjavík harbourside.

Skaftafell

Skaftafell has played such an important part in my life over the years that I'm sure it will crop up in many posts to come. I'm not even going to attempt to do a short comprehensive piece. It's unique and very beautiful. Unsurprisingly, it's immensely popular with tourists, both Icelandic and foreign. This, given its small size and fragility, keeps managers, rangers and volunteers constantly busy looking after it.

Skaftafell is centred on a small raised heathland of about 500 sq.km. surrounded on three sides by the vast bulk of Vatnajökull  and on the fourth, to the south, by gravel plains created by the glacier's outwash. 

Once one of the most inaccessible places in Europe, it was home to a farming community for centuries. It was made into a national park in 1967 and is now within the Vatnajökull National Park.

This picture shows the view from the heath looking south east. You can see two outlet glaciers coming down from  Vatnajökull, and the gravel plain, which extends upwards of 20 km in places, to the sea.

Here's WhysWhys posing on the east side of the heath, overlooking the nearest of those glacier tongues, Skaftafellsjökull, in sight of the point where it starts its descent from the Vatnajökull ice cap.

Summertime on the heath

The northern end of the heath. The near peak, with a collar of clouds, is Krístinartindar, an easy climb rewarded with beautiful views from the top.

 Looking across Skaftafellsjökull  from the eastern path to Krístinartindar.

Krístinartindar summit, looking out over Vatnajökull to the north. On the left (west) of the picture is Morsàjökull, another outlet glacier, with ice falls over the cliff. 

Volunteers relaxing at the top of Krístinartindar

Here a volunteer works on the restoration of an old sheep enclosure, with a view west to Skeiðaràjökull, another outlet glacier from Vatnajökull. 

Old bridges are brought for dismantling ...

... to be recycled into boardwalks, steps and ...

... new bridges.


The black basalt cove and waterfall, Svartifoss, can be seen in the background.



















The black basalt columns of Svartifoss.

Volunteer lunch break at the top of Huntafoss ('Dogs' Waterfall')

Traditional Farm Buildings

Volunteers putting in drainage and repairing one of Skaftafell's busy paths. 

When we dig into the ground at Skaftafell we come across banded layers like these. They are deposits from volcanic eruptions. They can be checked against written records and cross-referenced to similar deposits to provide dating information, so each one can be connected with a specific eruption. One of the uses of this information is to help in the dating of archaeological remains.

The start of a busy summer weekend at Skaftafell campsite