In this series, you can see my adventures hiking in Icelandic Wild on a little-known trail that doesn't really have a name. Fifteen kilometers of different terrain and six hours of hiking. You can find the first part, Crossing Alien Planet-Like Mountain Range here. Now I had to cross a valley of lava field to reach to the hidden gem lake that was the goal of this hike.
In theory, this was going to be the easiest section of this hike because the landscape in the valley is mostly flat and there should be a path of some kind. First, I needed to get down the mountain range I climbed previously.
Up there from far away I was able to see Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. Pretty cool to see it from this angle, zoomed it out with my telephoto lens.
This is the trail I hiked down.
I remember that I heard some strange noises there. It was very quiet there and no people were around anywhere nearby. I think it might have been some bird and it made a sound I haven't heard before. I heard it from this place in a photo below but I saw nothing, no bird. The sound stopped after 30 seconds or so. Remains a mystery.
Soon enough I was down at the valley and there was a path, cars can also take this and drive but it's an F road. Roads/Paths that are marked with F are mountain roads and are forbidden by law to drive cars that are not 4wd. These roads are pretty rugged sometimes. Now I was hiking it until the merge with another F road. I lost phone service again in this valley and my trail map but I have a GPS signal and that's enough to navigate.
I started to see something in the distance that looked out of place. Fast forward a couple of minutes I saw it was a person laying on the moss. I had hiked two hours by that time and hadn't seen one person yet. I walked past him. He was just laying there, cap in his face. I said hello! You know, just to check if he's alive 😅. After a couple of seconds, he raised the cap and looked at me, raised his hand replied hello! and put the cap back on his face. I was not going to ask further questions and let him rest, I moved forward with my hike.
He was probably hiking a long distance too judging by his hiking bag and probably just took a calming rest.
Before I said hello, I snapped this shot of him quickly.
I reached to the junction where I was supposed to turn to the left. I also saw a sign indicating the lake I needed to reach. The sign looks historic lol.
It was time to take a quick rest before moving forward. I decided to do the same as the hiker I saw earlier and lay down on the Icelandic moss. Oh my god, it was so enjoyable. The moss is really soft and the warm sun shining down on you is just heavenly. Think I spent there about 10 minutes laying. I have to note that if you are going on the moss then try not to destroy or damage it. It takes a long time to grow back and Icelanders really value their mossy landscapes. So do your best to be careful about it, even if you are in the middle of nowhere.
All this is also a big field of lava rock that is covered with moss. This lava is not too old in geologic terms. It flowed there about 1900-2400 years ago in the event period called Reykjanes fires.
Time to start hiking again on the gravel road. I was starting to get closer to the lake.
I turned away from the road and into the hills.
It didn't take long once I saw the small part of the lake Djupavatn. This is only a very small part of the lake, hidden behind the hills.
My mind was blown by how beautiful it was there but this will be the topic of the next post in this series. Adventure goes on, stay tuned!
Last day to participate in my simple monthly weather game here to win 10 HIVE. Open until the remainder of the 17th of January.
