Hiking the Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls Trails

Note: Trail Planning Tips at the end of the post!

After our two-week road trip around the Ring Road, I was ready to stretch my legs-- particularly because the last couple of days had been driving intensive with over 400km each day. We had all reached our togetherness breaking point.

We started the trail on June 24th, which is fairly early in the season, as it usually opens mid- to late- June depending on the weather. We had been checking reports in the days and weeks leading up to the trip and felt very lucky that it opened just in time!

Day One: Laugavegur Trail, Landmannalaugar to Hrafntinnusker

My sister and I took the 8:00 a.m. bus from the BSI Bus Terminal in Reykjavik, just a short walk from the center of town, and arrived in Landmannalaugar around noon.  Landmannalaugar was bustling with day hikers and thru hikers. As we started off on the trail, I heard a rush of footsteps behind us, and a man breathlessly started to barrage me with questions. 

"Do you know the trail conditions?" he asked. 

"Well, one-third is covered by snow." I responded. 

"How about the weather?" 

"Tomorrow partly cloudy, the day after cloudy, the day after maybe rain."

People walked past us as I tried to figure out who he was. 

"Do you know what the weather was like yesterday?" 

"Um, no." I knew it had been raining when we were driving, but this was a different area from where we had been.

He went on to explain that it had been snowing and that a couple of people had difficulty passing from Álftavatn to Hrafntinnusker and had thought they were going to die. Everyone was fine though. It turned out he was one of the wardens at Landmannalaugar, or what we would know as a park ranger. 

"Do you have any experience doing anything similar?" he continued to grill me. "There might not be any footprints because of the snow last night." I was getting pretty annoyed at this point. I noticed six men passing us with large backpacks on, a tea kettle hanging off one, and we had noticed someone in the staging area taking their pot out of its packaging. 

He looked at my shoes and then my backpack. "Well, you have the proper shoes and backpack." 

My sister was not bothered and starting chatting him up, but I was annoyed, having experienced a number of sexist (maybe racist) outdoor exchanges before-- like the time my friend Ruby and I were trying to rent a bear canister from the ranger station in King's Canyon National Park, and he tried to discourage us from spending the night and encouraged us instead to day hike; or the time I asked the guy working at the ski expo whether the mittens I was looking at were waterproof, and he informed me that they weren't, but "when you're better" you can buy better ones. (I've been skiing since I was five years old); or the REI salesperson who discouraged me from buying trekking poles because you needed special training to use them properly, so he pushed me to the single hiking pole instead. 

I know I'm not Bear Grylls, but I have quite a bit of experience hiking, backpacking, mountaineering, alpine climbing, rock climbing, snow camping, and ski mountaineering. We had a paper map and GPS map.

I think what bothers me the most is that as a woman, I know I've internalized that questioning voice, that doubt that makes me an inaccurate judge of my own experience and abilities, that inner voice that undervalues my experience. So to have to deal with that again? I vented for the whole first mile of the hike to my sister, who seemed less bothered. 

On the trail, I ended up asking other through hikers (who were white and/or had a man in the group) whether or not they had similarly been accosted by the warden. No. Just us. The presumption of male competence...Or was this because we were Asian? Even though we met men who told us they had never done a multi-day hike before, or who were wearing cotton socks and looked like they had never camped before, or were running out of food on Day Two, they are presumed to be competent and strong. In the context of all of the recent talk about sexism in Silicon Valley companies, Congresswomen on being interrupted when their male counterparts aren't, and the blatant sexism in the recent Presidential campaign, I am frustrated by the sexism and micro aggressions that women face every day. And even more frustrated at how difficult it is not to internalize these same feelings. Okay, enough... on to the hike. 

The day was cloudy and overcast, but the landscape was still strikingly beautiful. That's the way it is in Iceland. It's beautiful when overcast, and breathtakingly stunning when it's sunny. The hills looked painted, with the patches of snow contrasting against the browns and greens.

The painted hills gave way to snow and we crossed snowy plains with little by way of markers.

The 12 kilometers of hiking passed quickly and we found ourselves at the Hrafntinnusker hut by 5 p.m. As evening fell, it got very cold. And even though I snow camp camp, I was very glad not to be out in the cold. Most of the folks who were camping kept going I think. 

Day Two: Laugavegur Trail, Hrafntinnusker to Álftavatn

Day Three: Laugavegur Trail, Álftavatn to Emstrur

Day Four: Laugavegur Trail, Emstrur to Þórsmörk (Langidalur)

Day Five: Fimmvörðuháls Trail, Þórsmörk (Langidalur) to Baldvinsskáli

The Baldvinsskáli hut is only about 3,000 feet above sea level. From the front porch of the hut, we could watch the clouds clear and see the coastline below. As the evening wore on, it got clearer and clearer. It was really strange to be in so much snow at such low elevation. In California, I'm not used to seeing that much snow until I'm at maybe 10,000 feet!

Day Six: Fimmvörðuháls Trail, Baldvinsskáli to Skogar

 

Trail Planning Tips: 

• You can buy a great topo map at any of the bookstores on the main road Laugavegur Road in Reykjavik for about $20. 
• Consider bringing a very light sleeping back or thicker sleep sack because it was quite warm in all of the huts. 
• You do not have to worry about booking a bus very far in advance. It's cheaper to book it online than in person at the bus terminal, and there is a special hiking pass for the two ways, which makes it cheaper than buying two one-way tickets. Just make sure you know the schedule because they are infrequent. 
• If you book within the same hut system, it's possible to move reservations if there is space. We booked all of our huts here: https://www.fi.is/en/mountain-huts. We were worried about the weather the last night (rain forecast) so we moved our last hut night from Þórsmörk (Langidalur) to Baldvinsskáli.
• The weather report seemed generally not to be accurate. And the wardens didn't have a very good idea about the weather reports. 
• We made our reservations in January and it was full at the time. But other hikers had made reservations in February and March. One guy even got a space that day. People cancel so follow up, keep checking. Other than Hrafntinnusker, there was at least one free bed in every hut. 
• There was quite a bit of snow travel since it was early season. I brought microspikes because I already owned them and they're light. I thought they were handy but one could definitely have done it without. 
• If you're in good shape, it's definitely possible to do both hikes in three consecutive days: Landmannalaugar to Álftavatn, Álftavatn to Þórsmörk (Langidalur), Þórsmörk (Langidalur) to Skogar. There is not a lot of elevation gain/loss and I found the hiking easy. We were done with the hiking around lunch every day. That being said, I do a lot of hiking and mountaineering at elevation in the Sierras and ran a half marathon the weekend before Iceland. A couple of people we talked to were suffering from aching knees and one young Swiss girl had to cancel the Fimmvörðuháls Trail part of her hike because her knees hurt.  You would also miss out on some of the nice day hikes in the area. But definitely an option if you're short on time and in good shape. There is an ultra marathon that does the whole Laugavegur trail in one go!

Postscript
We stayed overnight in Skogar, the town right near Skogafoss and came back the next day to see the waterfall in brilliant sunlight. The lupine provided a beautiful backdrop, although we had learned on the trail, when we saw trail volunteers pulling out the lupine, that lupine is an invasive plant in Iceland and they're trying to eradicate it. 

So here is a overload of photos of Skogafoss. It's hard not to overload on photos of Iceland, period.