If you’ve seen Mark’s pages, you know that he’s always taking pictures of me. Turn- about! (Big image, small.)

It would be a bit of a drive till we got to our hotel, the Fosshótel Skaftafell, so we made a couple of stops between Vík, where we had walked on the beach, and our destination. We agreed that our walk on the glacier should be before supper, since our lunch had been so filling.

As I say in the caption above, we made a little side-trip to get a look at some columnar basalt, and at that time I took the picture of Mark at the right.

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We got to our hotel, changed to warm clothes and made sure we had our hiking sticks, for walking on Svínafellsjökull. This is a tongue of the great glacier Vatnajökull, which is considered to be the largest glacier in Europe. Of course, you have to grant that Iceland is Europe. Before leaving, I made sure that I had the fish-eye lens in my pack: I anticipated that there’d be lots of opportunity for wide views.

It was a bit of a walk to get up to the glacier. In the upper picture to the left, you see what the day was like as we set out: lovely weather with scattered clouds (big image, small). Once we got far enough, we had tantalizing views of the glacier, as you see in the lower picture to the left (big image, small).

To get onto the glacier, we had to hike onto the moraine first, and then climb a ridge composed of very crumbly gravel-like soil, and then climb down again. In the picture to the right, you see the ridge between Diane and the glacier (big image, small). Aside from the crumbliness, going up was not difficult; but going down to the ice was a little tricky. There were lots of muddy spots, and we really had to be careful where we put our feet.

Down below, the left-hand picture in the top row shows some of us—Jerye, Ronnie, Gisele, and Shirley—picking the way down to the ice (big image, small). Just about ten or twelve minutes later, we had our crampons on—you can easily see them in the big version of the right-hand picture of the top row—and were well into our expedition on the glacier. (Small image.) My first glacier walk was on the Fox Glacier in New Zealand, and all indications are that that was considerably more treacherous than this one. We clearly needed the highly skilled guides that were with us then, and the crampons we used were extremely heavy-duty ones. The crampons today were easily pulled on and off, but gave us a good purchase none­the­less.

(Big image, small.)	(Big image, small.)

Two years earlier, on the Fox Glacier, I was surprised that the ice was so gray and dirty. What was going on was that the rock that had been swept up by the pulverizing action of the glacier had made its way to the surface, so that the glacier was not by any means pure ice. Here on Sví­na­fells­jökull, the ice was even more mixed with rock dust, so that in places it was almost pure black, and in many we couldn’t tell whether we were walking on soil, rock, or ice till we probed with the walking stick.

(Big image, small.)

(Big image, small.)

(Big image, small.)

Where we walked on the gla­cier, it was neither rough and craggy like my previous experience in New Zealand, nor smooth like a newly snowed-on field. Rather, the whole surface was crossed by narrow, relatively shallow grooves, as you see in the left picture of the middle row to the left (big image, small). (Right-hand picture in that row: big image, small.)

The vistas were inspiring and humbling. I switched over to the fish-eye lens, and took lots of super­wide pictures, like those on the bottom row to the left, and the ones to the right.

Finally, we pulled off our crampons, and climbed back up the ridge and down to the trail that had led us to the glacier.

Lupine everywhere (big image, small).

Except where it’s volcanic ash (big image, small).

The hike back to our hotel was rather easier than the journey out, and Mark and I arrived exactly at our announced dinner time. (After everybody else, as always.) But Erling assured us that there would be no problem if we took the time to shower. This we did, and arrived at the table as people were starting on their lox salad. This was very very fine. Mark and I ordered lamb, which came out well-done but tasty. Dessert was chocolate volcano, a scoop of va­nilla ice cream on a hot chocolate mousse. Very nice, good meal all around.

One of the nicest of my fish-eye shots on the glacier.