Iceland: Day 6

06 January 2016

My mind’s eye panned across a dark and quiet room where the delimiter of a digital clock flashed red through the haze of moonlight. And music began in time with the tick-tock of the downstairs grandfather clock, steadily and nervously building into some terrifying cacophony of sound. I watched myself sleep from some dissociative, external vantage point until all at once, as if the noise and this vision were synchronously aligned, there was silence. Beaming eyes jolted from some dynamic comatose and into the darkness of reality, and it felt as though this nightmare sweat into the stillness of the bedroom, the warmth of those covers, and the rattle of loose panes in a window frame. I was back in my own body.

We drove through the veil of morning twilight with the radio off so that I could concentrate through my heavy eyelids on the road buried in snow and ice. And for forty-five minutes, the only sounds that divided the taciturnity were of oncoming cars with engines rumbling that low-to-high-to-low hum as they zoomed to the east and of a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee that did not seem to sit very well or fill quite enough. And it felt as though we would never get there, and a part of me didn’t want to because “courage is a peculiar kind of fear” was hard to grasp.

But when we did arrive, pulling into the parking lot of some nameless place in the village of Hali, I stepped out of the car to find that the crick in my knee was matched by a crick in my breath. The three of us were early, but that did not matter, because we wanted all the time we could to turn this fear into courage. We found a seat inside what we discovered was half a café, half a reception area. A kiosk of climbing equipment in the corner of the room was the only thing to reassure that we were in the right location. But all too soon, while rubbing our hands together to warm our thawing fingers, a man pulled open the door and asked in broken English, “You Thomas and friends? Hello. I am named Hawk, your guide. Nice meeting you.”

Hawk was a staunch man of forty that looked to be no older than twenty-five. Although he was short—somewhere around 5’7”—he stood with his shoulders squared and his back straight; he was proud, unbending under the weight of a hardhat, headlamp, pickaxe, climbing harness, lead ropes, and a backpack full of medical supplies. On the other hand, his flaxen hair and fair skin were coupled by a sprightly, gracious attitude; never did I see Hawk without a smile. He was, by all accounts, the summation of Icelandic culture: the adventurous truculence of the Vikings mixed with the elvish delight of the fairies.

He handed each of us a climbing harness, crampons, and a hardhat, telling us to meet outside when we were ready to go. I pulled off my gloves and slid the harness over my rainproof pants; I didn’t know it was possible to have such cold hands and such sweaty palms. The fear that tore me from sleep had evolved from some intangible “I would never do that” into a reality, but I found that with it was growing an excitement that I had never felt before. If you are afraid of heights, imagine waiting in line for a rollercoaster—you feel the fear of what is to come, but it isn’t until you hear the click of the harness tightening around your waist that you really believe that you’re actually doing it.

We clambered outside to see Hawk standing by a Jeep that was raised up on tires that were as tall as he. We were introduced to Sikky, the rear guide. He was more Viking than Hawk and did not say much. He welcomed us to Iceland and explained that he would follow while Hawk led to guarantee that, say a portion of the ceiling were to collapse and separate the group, he would be able to lead us out and return to the Jeep to summon a helicopter rescue team. Sikky was tall and bald and stout and looked like the doppleganger of Тарас Кулаков from the popular Youtube channel “Crazy Russian Hacker.” He looked like he could buffalo his way across a glacier, but like Hawk, Sikky was convivial with what little he said. He wore the same equipment but with a few more ropes and an extra pickaxe. He checked the Jeep’s tire pressure and inventoried their spare gear while Hawk briefed us on the day’s expedition.

We ascended into the Jeep; I sat behind Hawk, whose small body was further dwarfed by the vehicle he was driving. During the ten-minute trip west on H1, he told us that his father’s father has owned the surrounding mountains since he was old enough to shepherd. And to this day, you can still see the old man herding his sheep across the rocky terrain. I could tell that he was trying to make light out of our fear, and his stories did work when he added that the mountains we would be climbing were used to film scenes from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty—the producers had to get Hawk’s grandfather’s permission to use the massif. The more I learned, the more my anxiety turned into anticipation; the night was turning into morning.

We arrived at Jökulsárlón, and I soon discovered why we were sitting on such mammoth tires. There was no road from H1 to the head of the glacier, so we had to cross a 4-kilometre wake of wasteland left behind by the receding ice cap. The Jeep waded through 1.2-metre deep lagoon recesses, over rocks the size of refrigerators, and along inclines that had to have been at least a 50% grade. Half of the time I was holding onto the handle above my head to prevent my body from collapsing onto Ryan’s, who was sitting beside (and relatively underneath) me. I would look out the window and see only sky or only earth, but the dark blue beyond the windshield transcended that dichotomy and was within view, and growing, with every twist and turn of our vehicle.

Hawk stopped the Jeep in a relatively flat area, “This is where Walter Mitty played football with Sherpa.” He turned up the radio, and we drove the rest of the way listening to Of Monsters and Men, an Icelandic band (in which Hawk took much pride) featured throughout The Secret Life. I straightened my back, took a deep breath, and embraced Hawk’s lightheartedness as I realized that we were on an adventure so great that Ben Stiller decided to turn it into a movie. We neared “the Wall” but had to exit the Jeep about a kilometre out, because not even it could cross the final terrain. Hawk stretched and asked if we enjoyed our very first “Icelandic massage,” which left us with stiff necks and an appreciation for being on foot!

Gathered between a hodgepodge of similar trekking vehicles sat a few men and women dressed in full-blown parkas. Some were climbers planning to spend the day abseiling moulins (glacial mills) for Good Morning America, which was featuring the Vatnajökull glacier in a segment about global warming. We were going to cross one of the most beautiful places on earth, but also one of the most dangerous. I looked at my reflection in the dim light cast against the spots of the Jeep where mud hadn’t yet caked itself on the glass. With a tripod strapped to my back and a camera wrapped around my neck, was I really prepared for the expedition? Was a climbing harness snug at my hips going to keep me from plunging to my death? Were the crampons and carabiners clipped to my waist strong enough? Were a fleece, a down coat, and a waterproof jacket going to keep me warm or was I going to freeze? The fear that Hawk had worked so hard to suppress had returned in full force. But regardless of how prepared or how nervous I was in this moment, I knew I had to conquer my consternation and concentrate on where I was and what I was doing.

“Welcome to the Breiðamerkurjökull outlet of Vatnajökull!” Hawk beamed, extending his arms out to his sides, a pickaxe in one hand and a two-way radio in the other. We began climbing single-file through ripples of bedrock folded like cloth. As one of the most powerful forces on earth, Vatnajökull had flattened the mountain that once stood here. Those that had remained continued to move with the glacier; their lava rock terraces—made taller every time another one of Iceland’s many volcanos coated the land in magma—shifted to face the floe as though it were true north and the island was one big compass. But just as magnets lose their power when exposed to extreme heat, Iceland’s true north was receding inland on all sides—between 100 and 200 metres annually. Even as the largest ice cap outside of the poles, Vatnajökull was no match for the very catastrophic, very obvious effects of global warming. She was, and is, shrinking as swiftly as the wind moves.

We continued towards the Wall, dipping in and out of crevices left by the glacier. About half a kilomere out, Hawk stopped us to share that we were crossing a location used in films such as Interstellar (2014), James Bond: Die Another Day (2002), and Star Wars (1977-2015). I could not believe that we were trekking across Planet Hoth and thought to myself, rather fun-lovingly and incredulously, “maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll find a tauntaun. I doubt it, because this place is entirely lifeless. Not even a wampa could survive in this absolute, uninhabitable wasteland.”

Hawk took this moment to explain how this beautiful beast formed (the glacier, that is, not a tauntaun or wampa). Layers of volcanic ash settled over ice, keeping it cool and protected from the sun; snow then covered that ash. The cycle was repeated over and over, and the weight compressed in on itself until the mass became the same density as liquid water (freezing water molecules expand). In fact, Vatnajökull is so heavy that it pushes the island into the ocean. But as it melts and recedes and produces raging rapids of runoff, the oceans rise, the island rises, but the coastlines along the equator remain the same. “Sea level” is a very relative and dynamic term. I do not mean to beat a dead tauntaun, but you and I have surpassed the planet’s half-life.

We continued further into Planet Hoth and up the side of one of Grandfather Hawk’s mountains, ascending 50 metres and leveling out with the surface of the floe. The entire mountain was coated in a thin layer of volcanic ash, because one of the most powerful volcanoes in Iceland was still cooling just on the other side of the glacier. With a recording breaking release of sulphur dioxide and a four-story-deep lava field that had grown more than a kilometre per day for seven months, the subglacial stratovolcano known as Bárðarbunga had decimated the northern frontier of Vatnajökull. Fortunately, she no longer spat magma through the atmosphere. Unfortunately, daily localized earthquakes meant that she might erupt at any moment. As though he were impervious to lava—as was with most denizens at the fringes of Mordor—Hawk coolly smiled and brushed off what brewed just 75 kilometres across the glacier.

He drew a rough sketch of our route on an impromptu map of ash with the blunt end of his pickaxe. I strapped into my crampons while Sikky severely warned us to watch as carefully as ever for cracks in the ice. “One false move, and you plummet into ravine.” If I were lucky, I would only fall 40 metres into an interglacial river, where I would shatter all the bones in my legs and run the risk of drowning. If I were unlucky, I would plummet hundreds of metres to the very bottom of the glacier, where my bones would turn to powder, my organs would implode, and I would expire. Again, fear found its way into the center of my thoughts and my palms began to sweat. Suddenly, without breaking his smile, Hawk jauntily skipped from the safety of the side of the mountain and led us onto the glacier.

With a bit of apprehension, I extended my right foot over the ice; here began the actualization of my fears: of violent eruptions, of arcane chasms, of freezing waters, of being surrounded by death, of the unknown. I extended my left foot; now all of me was floating above a frozen ocean. I found that my fear did not paralyze me; rather, butterflies formed in my stomach, and courage pulled me towards Hawk and the others. I stared into the depths below my boots. Left foot, right foot. The layers were so tightly pressed together that sediment did not cloud the ice. Moving across the relatively clear and extremely smooth surface of this glacier was like walking on water. Left foot, right foot. Have you ever noticed how, when you set two mirrors together and create an infinity loop, it fades into a viridescent darkness? Just beyond my crampons and the shavings from where they dug into the ice, everything faded into a distant sapphire mystery. I could not decipher what I was looking at, but I could not look away, mesmerized by the deluge of cerulean diamond underneath my feet. Left foot, right foot. I simultaneously experienced wonder and guilt, terror and delight, heaven and hell. I was suspended in air and frozen in time. Left foot, right foot.

In the distance, the Good Morning America crew was building the set while reporters warmed their hands by a space heater (What was that doing on the ice?), climbers prepared to abseil, and drones floated overhead. Ludicrously enough, Hawk and Sikky knew the climbers; they exchanged greetings over their two-ways. We explored more of the surface of the ice until Hawk summoned us over to the edge of the glacial shelf. Directly below where we stood, a raging interglacial waterfall had burst from the side of Breiðamerkurjökull and roared with life. Its rapids plunged back into the floe, carving out a cave towards the bottom of the Wall. Hawk pointed down into the darkness of the ice cave, “That’s where we go. New and unexplored. We make bridge last night.”

So apparently, they had scheduled us to spelunk a fissure that had been another kilometre down the road, but it unexpectedly collapsed just the day prior. Rather than cancel our expedition, Hawk and Sikky scavenged the glacier for a replacement. Fortunately, this waterfall showed up and provided the means necessary. Sure, having committed guides was fantastic—they were knowledgeable about our surroundings, well prepared, extremely reassuring, and full of joy—but we were descending into a very literal unknown. No one knew what would be down there in the darkness. I did not think a wampa would appear, but I did question its stability considering that the one they thought was secure was now buried under thousands of kilograms of hoarfrost destruction. Those butterflies in my stomach felt more like bees.

Hawk hesitated for the shortest but most noticeable moment before putting the entirety of his weight on the wobbling bridge before us, one built of two-by-fours and a handful of spare nails. It bent under the weight of Hawk alone. “One at a time, please!” Sikky yelled from behind us. One by one, we clipped into a safety rope tied to a large rock just beyond the edge of the ravine and crossed the bridge. I was too afraid to look down. When Sikky had made it across, Hawk exclaimed with a breath of relief, “Great, just one more to go!”

And so we repeated the rickety crossing. But this time my eyes drifted from the end of the bridge. Fifty metres below, chiseled spears of ice reverberated against cascades of white; my face must have matched them in color. More than once, I double-checked that my harness was securely tightened and that my carabiners were locked on the safety rope. But we all made it. From the top of the glacier, across a river, and to the side of Breiðamerkurjökull, we descended towards the bottom of the Wall. I looked down into the blackness of the belly of the glacier and began whispering prayers under my breath. I doubted I would be leaving this ice cave.

A narrow, natural ridge had formed along the Wall, which brought us straight into the mouth of the hollow. I held onto the embankment as I descended to keep my balance. Although it looked like lava rock, everything I touched was smooth, black ice. The peaks of three adjacent mountains loomed overhead and listened to the continuous click of my carabiner clipping and unclipping from the safety rope as I reached points where it was notched into the ice as I moved into the glacier. The final few metres included a ladder covered in ice. Withstanding a minor slip on my landing, the entire trek from Jeep to ice cave was a resounding success. Hawk remained at the ladder to help Joey and Ryan down while I freed myself from the last bit of safety rope and took a few steps further into the cave, careful not to fall as wind whipped at my back. Torrents thundered into the unknown, covering me in Arctic glacial water while I wondered what lie beyond the immense darkness before me. The cave was colossal, with at least a 40-metre diameter. And there I was: small and meaningless and standing on the edge of a great abyss. Every “next step” could have been my last. There was no time for fear. There was only time for adjusting my eyes and watching my feet and my head. Hawk motioned me forward.

All at once, the cave swallowed me. I put my hands out in front of me and moved forward with vigilance, as if I had woken up in the middle of the night and had to maze my way from bed to kitchen with only moonshine to light the way. The cave declined steadily; the embankment of ice to my right and the sound of the interglacial river to my left guided me down. My crampons dug firmly into the ice with every step. The place was ominous and beset both the feeling of being entirely alone and as if something evil was going to grab at my legs and drag me into an abyss. But thankfully, as soon as Sikky made his way down the ice ladder, a shining pair of headlamps illuminated everything around me. With Hawk and Sikky now serving as beacons of light, we moved slowly into the belly of the beast. Deeper and deeper we went until the space between the smooth ice ceiling above and the rocky ice floor below began to grow; we rounded a corner and came to the bottom of a moulin.

The room exploded in color as light flooded down from above and irradiated the ice around us, exposing alabaster bubbles suspended in a steely sheet of ultramarine glass, droplets of water floating down onto our heads as the sun beat down on the surface above, and a transparent river running sans silt and so untainted that Joey filled his water bottle with fresh and freezing aqua vitae. There was a palpable azure hue to everything in the room, including us visitors. I gazed into the walls of glacier surrounding me—how endlessly on they went, how chillingly insignificant I felt. I turned my attention up towards the moulin. The hairs on the back of my neck raised, not for the water droplets that ran down my shoulders, but because this beautiful blue chamber unearthed exactly how much glacier creaked above and pushed in on the cavern around me. I wondered when the combination of flowing water, global warming, and coming summer sun would cause all this weight to come collapsing down.

We spent about forty-five minutes in this celestial firmament before Hawk announced that we would need to depart before the sun set (do not forget that the days are short and the nights are long during winter months in the Arctic). I watched as the river flowed through the 80-metre-long room, continued into a slit in the ice, and crossed a shelf too narrow to explore any further. I soaked in as much of the place as possible before returning to the path we had taken in, up the sloping ice walls, over the frozen ladder, and to the first rickety bridge. Before crossing it, I looked back into the chasm from whence I came and was overcome with life, and my lungs filled with something better than air. It felt so real, though I couldn’t have imagined something as transcendental even in the greatest of dreams.

After crossing the two bridges—which did not seem so dangerous anymore—we made our way around one of Grandfather Hawk’s mountains, arriving at the very front of the Wall of Breiðamerkurjökull. Here, as we looked towards this great glacier, upon which the Good Morning America crew was still filming, we detached our crampons and listened to Hawk tell many whimsical stories. For example, he told us about a man that came running all the way from H1 in shorts and a t-shirt. The man reached the glacier and, without missing a beat, dove headfirst into it. He soon emerged with a glass full of ice, yelling, “I needed some ice for my cocktail!”

Hawk’s humour and our restored safety were rejuvenating, so the return trip was blithe and brisk. Now and then, a sharp jolt of pain would shoot down my leg and through my knee, but I was happy enough to be alive and didn’t let it slow me down. I just kept on hiking as steadily as ever. Sometimes I would smile through the pain whenever Sikky retold one of Hawk’s stories on our journey back across Planet Hoth. Ryan, Joey, and I would look at each other and burst into laughter as we listened again to a story far too similar to that of the man and his cocktail ice.

We got to the Jeep as the sky turned silver, dark, and heavy with snow, so Hawk hurriedly drove through the 4-kilometre wake of wasteland. I was fortunate enough to sit in the passenger’s seat, which gave me a bird’s eye view of the forsaken terrain and a front row seat to Hawk’s stories. While the Jeep rocked back and forth, sometimes so violently that we would smack our heads against the windows, Hawk casually shared with us that he had been a practicing economist up until he decided one day that he would rather spend his time in glaciers than in banks. And so he left the comfort of the capital for this. He laughed as he recalled the wild but true tale of Jón Gnarr, a comedian who ran for political office with a platform based entirely on three promises: 1) everyone would receive a free towel at the swimming pool; 2) everyone would receive a free polar bear; 3) he would break all of his promises. I guess the current U.S. presidential election doesn’t look so sour in light of the fact that this man is now the mayor of Reykjavík. “Gnarr was member of the Best Party, but I was member of the Pirate Party,” Hawk laughed. “Yes, these are real political parties here in Iceland.” He shared stories the entire way back.

When we returned to Hali, Hawk told us that his wife’s family owned everything in town. He pointed towards different buildings, saying, “That’s where her amma and afi live. That’s where her mamma and pabbilive. That’s the grocer, which is also a bank and a post office, and her sister lives upstairs.” We ate late lunch together in the half-café, half-reception with the kiosk of climbing equipment in the corner, after which we said goodbye to our guides with sturdy handshakes and a hearty embrace. Ryan, Joey, and I then wandered down the only street in Hali towards the ocean’s edge. We stumbled as wet and whipping winds trenched us in frothy seawater. Soon thereafter, we ran back to the car before we were blown away. I fell into the driver’s seat, breathing a ternary sigh of relief with Joey and Ryan: we did it; we hiked through a glacier; we made it out alive.

The drive back to Höfn was quiet and quick. Our only stop was an old, abandoned farm house where we found a rusted plow, about 25 Krónur (about $0.20USD) in frozen-to-the-earth coinage around a cluttered shed, and thousands of piles of sheep droppings. When we arrived at the hostel, I discovered that waterproof pants didn’t just keep glacial water out; they also kept sweat in. With my legs drenched and my knee in pain (I guess the adrenaline had worn off), I decided to stay inside and relax as Joey and Ryan walked around town. We later enjoyed a dinner of ramen, Doritos, and coffee, played some card games with a Canadian, and talked about Northern Lights patterns with a Thai man; there would be no Lights tonight. A blizzard was coming down, so we retired to the room early.

We dove into a deep blue slumber in the dark and quiet room where the delimiter of a digital clock flashed red through the haze of moonlight. But instead of nightmares, we dreamt the greatest of dreams, of glaciers and ice and life.