Canadian adventures

Canada has been on my bucketlist for quite a while, and last summer I finally got the chance to go there and spend 5 weeks on outdoor adventures. I am definitely not always that good at planning my trips, so when I landed in Vancouver I had only a vague idea of the country I just had landed in. It turned out that I pretty quickly learned many of the do’s and don’ts in this beautiful country.

First: climbing!

One of the things on my Canadian to-do list was climbing on some of the rock there. After some recommendations from friend and Vancouver locals, I went over to the Stawamus Chief Campground near Squamish, just an hour North of Vancouver. This campground is where climbers from all over the world gather to climb the iconic 700 m. granite wall of “The Chief” with loads of both sports and traditional climbing routes. If this Grand Wall is just a bit too intimidating, then there are also many other climbs in the area to keep one entertained for months on end. And if you need to give your arms a rest for the day, then there is loads of hiking and mountainbiking to do on the different trails in the area. The campsite itself is the coziest campsite that I have ever been too. It is, unlike many other campsites in Canada, a first-come –first-serve campsite with 47 walk-in camp pads and very basic facilities. Whereas I was only familiar to campsites that have big open field where you can park your tent basically anywhere, this and other campsites in Canada consist mainly of tent pads; big squares on which you can pitch a couple of tents. At night, people slowly come over to the picnic benches to cook up their dinners, play some games and find their climbing buddies for the next day.

Camping amongst wildlife

But even though it is so much fun there, and there are quite a few people present at all times, one of the things you can’t slack on is the way you store your food. Bears roam nearly everywhere in the country, and also near many of the campsites. Whenever food (or any food-related items and other products with a smell, such as toothpaste) is left behind unattended, a bear could just sniff its way to it. As soon as it then gets accustomed to human food, it might lose its fear of humans. At that point it is a threat to the public and will  to be euthanized. And also, imagine waking up in your sleeping bag whilst a bear is eating its way through your breakfast that you forgot to take out of your tent porch.. So every time that you leave your tent or crawl into your sleeping bag, make sure that all your food is safely stowed away. On many campsites you’ll find special food bins or structures that allow you to hang your food high up in the air.  

Squamish luckily only has the Black bears, which seem to be the “friendlier” variant of bears. But after 10 days of fun in Squamish, I left that behind to go on some multiple day hikes in the next state to the East, Alberta. There you will find Jasper and Banff national park, which do not only host Grizzly bears and other wildlife, but also the great sights of the Canadian Rocky mountains with countless hiking trails. Most of the campsites, both the ones near the towns and the ones on the trails will need to be booked – for some quite a long while advance. By the time that I arrived to Jasper, it was September and therefore off-season, so I was lucky enough to book myself into 3 multi-day hikes.

 Hiking equipment

For these hikes, I needed a bit more equipment than on hikes I’ve been on in other countries. Being in Grizzly territory, you will want to have some bear spray at hand – and know how to use it without spraying yourself in the eyes with this strong pepper spray. It is however quite rare that one really gets to use the spray on any of the wildlife. The animals are mainly dangerous when they are surprised by humans, or when humans come too close to their young. Just remember to be quite noisy on your trip, by talking with your hiking buddies, sing, or just scream “Hey Bear!” every once in a while. Most animals will then be long gone before you come too close. And just remember to store your food away securely, and carry all (yes, also your apple core) waste out with you.

Apart from the wildlife, also water quality is something you’ll have to think about. Unfortunately you shouldn’t really drink water straight from the stream in Canada, so always carry a water filter or some purification tablets. I personally prefer the water filter, as through them you can drink the water straight away (with tablets you often have to let them work for a while) and you’ll avoid giving your water a chemical taste. I used the MSR Trailshot Microfilter, which is  a small, very light and easy to use filter. The tube leading towards the water is relatively short and pumping goes rather slow, but especially for solo-hikers this is a very good choice. If you are with a bigger group, you might consider using a bigger system like the MSR guardian purifier.

Another piece of new equipment for me was a GPS device with messenger function. Phone coverage in the Canadian National parks is very small, and as a solo hiker I do find it essential to be able to send out an emergency message if necessary. Apart from being able to send out messages, also the GPS map function of some of these devices can come in handy. The trails in the national parks of Canada are usually easy to find and follow, but there is always a chance of a damaged part of the trail where you’ll have to find another way around.

Apart from those things, the other things that I needed for my multi-day hikes in Canada were pretty standard. I brought a new and very light one man tent (so sorry to leave my good old Hilleberg at home though). I also exchanged my old Prolite Plus Therm-a-Rest for the an even warmer and lighter sleeping pad; the NeoAir Xtherm from the same brand. I knew that the nights would be pretty chilly, and with an R value of 5.7, this pad should be able to keep you nice and warm in your sleeping bag. I still haven’t really decided if it is actually comfortable or not though... My cooking equipment was the MSR whisperlight. Not the lightest piece of equipment, but it will burn at cold temperatures and you’ll be able to find fuel everywhere – I knew that in case there was no outdoor store to be found anywhere, I could knock the door of a gas station and fill up my fuel bottle there. You’ll burner will burn black, but at least you will have hot food. My hiking poles definitely saved me on this trip, as did my Arcteryx down jacket. And last but not least; I have been carrying an emergency blanket around on hikes for the past 5 years, and my Canadian hiking buddy Megan finally showed me a good use for it. It keeps you very nice and warm if you wrap it around your waist under all your clothes, or you can stuff it at your feet inside your sleeping bag. It is probably some of the cheapest and lightest equipment you can buy, but it definitely does a very good job at keeping you warm.

And finally: the hikes!

So what hikes did I do? I first started on the longest of them: the Brazeau loop, which leads you over 3 amazing mountain passes over just more than 80 km of trail. Here you’ll really feel the wilderness, as apart from the campsites and trails, there is no sign of human activity and there are so many different animals around. The skyline trail was the next hike I went on, which took 3 days. This hike is probably the most popular overnight hike in Jasper national park, and so especially this one needs to be booked quite far in advance. It takes you through beautiful meadows and up onto an amazing ridge. Don’t be fooled by the popularity of this trail though – this doesn’t make it any safer. There are some windtunnels on that ridge, and when we were there, the wind blowed so hard that Megan, Vance and I had to crawl over some of the stretches. Scooting myself on my butt over a trail is definitely not my favorite form of transportation.. Also on my final multiday hike, the Tonquin valley, the weather was not my best friend as it suddenly became very cold. Where I was walking in shorts on the Brazeau loop, the Tonquin valley left me shivering in my sleeping bag, wrapped in emergency blankets. It is, however, a beautiful (but also very muddy) hike, with unforgettable views over Amethyst lake. I even spotted a grizzly bear here – luckily we were on opposite sides of the valley!

So if you do not know what to do yet this summer, make sure to book a ticket to beautiful Canada for your outdoor holiday. It is a truly amazing country – just make sure to stock up on the right gear before you go!

At night at one of the campsites of the Brazeau loop

At the second mountain pass of the Brazeau loop

Crawling over the ridge at the Skyline trail - with Megan and Vance

Chilly nights in my tiny tent at the Tonquin valley trail

The beautiful Amethyst lake

A pretty unexpected change in climate on top of the Sulphur Skyline

Summertime in Ásbyrgi

Traditionally, we have our final week of the ICV programme in Ásbyrgi. Two teams meet up for their final efforts as trailcrews, and it usually also is a great week to meet one or two more of the other team leaders. Unfortunately, things worked out in a way that I ended up being the only leader for both of these teams – not that they needed much leading any longer. And summer finally came! We worked in our shorts on some boardwalks that Monday and Tuesday, and enjoyed some nice walks in the beautiful surroundings those evenings.

And as our introweek involved both wood- and rock-work, so did our final week. After finishing up those boardwalks, we went on to the rockwork which included three days of hauling around heavy rocks and making a trail more defined. This trail between Dettifoss and Selfoss really has become a recurrent project for me. I started on it with Pierre, Isabel, Marc and Claire a year ago, working from the very south end towards Dettifoss. And where we dropped our tools last year, we continued working this year. First with some easy, but slightly boring covering of wishways, but the further we got, the bigger the challenge became. Purple team battled with a very messed up curve in the trail – loads of rocks sticking up from the surface, and so many side trails that tourists were walking on a trail that now was about 8 meters wide. They started pulling out the rocks sticking up from the actual trail, and hid the side trails with an amazing piece of landscaping-work.

The blues and I worked on a particular rocky piece of trail, where tourists basically had to make their way over the slippery rocks, leading to potentially dangerous situations, especially in wet weather (which we unfortunately had ended back up in again). Even the tiniest rocks sticking up from the surface appeared to be massive boulders, where we needed 4 rockbars and 5 or more people to even get it to move an inch. We managed to break the week up nicely with our traditional trip to Husavík for some whale watching, but then had to get back to the rocks again the next day. We got some extra muscle strength in the shape of Siggi on our last day, who helped us to roll over some more big rocks. Our last day of work was definitely a final test of our endurance and a last opportunity to get all mudded-up. And just as we were about to wrap up for the season, I looked up from my tools and saw a tourist headed towards me. Only her eyes were visible, but as soon as I looked into those eyes, I recognized her as one of the first people I met whilst living in Norway – it was Ana, a friend from Fantoft. Last time we had seen each other was about 5 years ago, and it was so confusing to see her just right there on our muddy worksite, but such a great surprise!

That night we had our Icelandic BBQ with the teams, but unfortunately without René. The sun wasn’t out to keep us warm, but we made one of our meshtents cozy with loads of candles and with a hot stove burning. It was a great end to yet another good season with our trailbuilders. Thanks to all the volunteers for giving their all for the Icelandic nature, and of course to René and Silja for organizing this great program. Can’t wait for the next season to start with new vollies that will hopefully do jobs just as good as the teams of this year.

Summer wasn’t over yet though, and after a nice and relaxing day in Reykjavik I got on a plane to Canada. Stay tuned for my hiking and climbing adventures over there!

Gotta love those Icelandic nails..

Sun’s out Guns out!

Teo’s expression says it all..

Whalewatching!

Just love how they fixed up this curve

Anna!

Last muddy groupphoto of the year

Waymarking in the heart of Iceland

Finally, the week had come for the Blue Team to dive into the highlands. We were going to start in Askja, which definitely is one of my favorite spots in Iceland. Not only because it is in the middle of nowhere; it is also just such a rough place with a pretty amazing landscape. On our way there, we went on a mission to find the hot waterfall that is hidden somewhere in those highlands. I had been there before and I had a ranger describe the location to me, but it still took us some u-eys to get to the right spot. We just had about 15 minutes in there before a massive Icelandic family showed up. Time for us to drive (and sometimes drift) on through that desert and on to Askja. Literally meters after entering the national park, we found our first off-road driver. The guy got pretty pissed off when I took his license number and gave him a rake to clean up his tracks (which I secretly enjoyed loads, even though he let his wife do the job). Eventually we made it to Askja, by which time the weather had turned pretty bad. Also, the campsite at Askja is definitely not the friendliest campsite to pitch a tent on, so we were pretty relieved when the hutwardens gave us a room in the hut.

I headed over for a quick meeting with the head ranger in the area to see what our week in the highlands would look like. The plan was that we would take 2 days to waymark the popular trail from a parking lot to the caldera of Askja, then maybe do some more marking on the road before moving over for a few days of work at Kverkfjöll. However, when I told the team about this plan, we basically put ourselves up for the challenge to be done with that first waymarking job before lunch on Monday. And so we set off from the parking lot, all geared up in our waterproofs and with all the waymarkers we could carry. We walked through the mist towards the caldera, dropping off our waymarkers on the way, ready to be smashed in the ground on our way back. That smashing started off easy, where driving a waymarker into the ground would not take more than a few hits, but as we got further away from the caldera, the ground became pretty rocky in places. So if you ever go there and you see the occasional waymarker that looks like the Hulk had a go at it– that’s probably one of ours. Lunch was pretty late that day, but at least we managed to win our own challenge. We didn’t think about the fact that this would leave us without any fun tasks in the afternoon, leaving us to pick garbage out of the river.

On Tuesday we drove down the road that leads even further into the highlands, where we did some more waymarking. Alistair once told me that when he had waymarked that road a few years ago, some lava decided to flow over the road just 2 days after they had finished. Needless to say we were hoping that that would not happen to us this time. Whilst the boys and Ekaterina armed themselves with sledgehammers and safety goggles to start widening the road leading to Nýidalur, Laura and I did the waymarking. We did get pretty delayed though, since apart from waymarking, we also tried to “rescue” the old waymarkers that had been sinking down in the sand over the years. There were a couple where we ended up digging deeper than our spades could get, resulting in us nearly falling face-first into the holes we had just dug ourselves.. By the time we got back to the others we needed to get some lunch inside our stomachs before we could help them out smashing up more lava rock to widen the road. And Askja wouldn’t be Askja without raking some off-road tracks!

One more day left in Askja – a stormy one, again with more waymarking of a trail. Once again, we drove over to the caldera, from where we would walk and mark the trail heading over the mountains back to the hut. We lost Teo for a little while though, when he stripped down and hopped in the warm water, but were then on our way. The trail ducked from at the caldera down into the snow, but then got more challenging as we had to hike further and further uphill with our waymarkers and tools. On top, we ended up on an incredibly windy ridge – not optimal when you are wearing waterproofs that basically function like big wingsuits. The downhill part of our trail became pretty miserable when the rain came in, so it was very nice when we eventually got back to the warmth of the hut for lunch. That afternoon we headed over to our second location of the week – Kverkfjöll. Not only a beautiful location with a very cozy hut, but also Elvars workplace. And what did he make us do? Yes, more waymarking! We walked up to one of the higher tops near the hut, the Bishop Mountain, jamming sticks into the rocky soil as we went. No nice sunny weather at the top for our lunch break, but the rain and wind added even more to that amazing, mysterious atmosphere of the area. Whilst Elvar, the girls and I did the last bit of waymarking on that trail, the guys ran ahead to go and get the car, which I basically head-dived into when they got it to us. Also on Friday, we had to mark a trail in the morning, but we had the afternoon off to actually hike a trail in a nearby area called Hvannalindir, finally without having to carry loads of sticks on our backs.

Saturday was our last day in the highlands, and finally we had the weathergods on our side! We found our way from the icecave to the origin of the river Jökulsá á Fjöllum, that we would meet the next day again near Ásbyrgi. To get there, we had to cross another pretty icy glacial river. The video I took of Max, swearing as his feet were turning into ice clumps whilst wading through the river, still makes me laugh every time I see it. That river wasn’t the biggest problem though –it was the smaller river that we met on our way back where we simply couldn’t find an easy way to cross over. All of us made it eventually, and we could start to prepare for our journey out of the highlands and up to Ásbyrgi for our final week.

Team ready to mark!

Our endgoal: the beautiful caldera

Two teammates threaten a third whilst the fourth turns her back.. #Teamdynamics

Got it!

Digging us a way to New Zealand - photo taken by Laura

The ICV Minions

Eye for detail - even snow will be raked up

On top of Bishop Mountain - loved the atmosphere here

Team Orange!

Hard to loose each other when wearing these things..

Woodworks at Skálafellsjökull (yes, try to pronounce that one right)

After 2 weeks with the short-term volunteers in Skaftafell, I spent my last 3 weeks in Iceland with the Blue team. A pretty diverse team, with the Italian Teo, Scottish Laura, English Max and Latvian Ekaterina. And for that first week I wasn’t just working with them; also Julie, Kerry (one of the short term volunteers) and Hannah (last year’s Purple team) joined us for some work a little drive away from Höfn. We had a nice and easy drive over there from Skaftafell that Sunday, and as soon as we set up our camp, we headed over to the pool where we would spend many hours that week – especially on the slides.

On Monday, we drove to our worksite at Skálafellsjökull, where you can go on a nice 1 hour-walk that loops around to the glacier and back. We split the team up here, where a third of the group continued with the gravelling that Red Team had started earlier on in summer, and the others started building 2 sets of stone stairs. Where Julie and her team seemed to work pretty well with some nice and manageable rocks, somehow my team ended up with massive monsters again. Loads of grunting and trembling muscles both that day and the following, so it was perfect to be able to soak in a hot hottub every evening. There were also a few nice glacier tongues and lakes to see, so we took both our truck and our Skoda over some bumpy roads to get there – one guess which one of the two cars wasn’t optimal for that kind of use..

Afraid that we would run out of rocks and out of working spines, I asked the ranger if we couldn’t build some boardwalks over the boggy parts of the trail, and luckily she was alright with that. Actually, she seemed more than alright with that; we had just finished a small first boardwalk from scrapwood when she called to say that a huge load of wood was headed our way. The local farmer brought the wood pretty close to us, so we only had to carry over all those planks and beams for the last couple of hundred meters. Now we knew the measurements of our stringers for the boardwalks, we started hammering away on some frames before heading back to Höfn.

That evening, after our daily hottub-soak, Elvar arrived who would join us for a day of trailbuilding. Using the fact that he has a truck that also could handle all the bumps, we drove over an even longer dirtroad to yet another glacier lagoon. Thursday was a day of high-speed building, divided up in 3 teams. Whilst one team was cutting into the dirt to be able to fit the structure in, another team was cutting wood whilst the last team was putting together another woodframe. During lunch, we had yet another visitor that day, when my friend Marianne and her parents and sister rocked up to our worksite. So fun to finally see someone from back home in Iceland, and to be able to show our work – even though our work at that time was munching away our massive sandwiches. After they had left again, we continued digging in the strangely fibrous mud, doing loads of measuring and fitting in the frames. Eventually we had put in 3 connecting frames plus another separate frame, all put firmly into place with the stobs that one of our “sub-teams” had made. Only the slats had to go on now, but we left that for the next day and decided to explore the rest of the hiking trail instead. The walk is definitely worth it if you are ever in the area, especially because it is very diverse. It is a steep walk up towards a canyon, after which there is a very bumpy and barren landscape that will make you feel like you’re on the moon, through which the trail leads you towards the glacier lagoon. After that, you follow the banks of a broad river through a mossy landscape, followed by some kilometers where you walk high above the river before getting back to the intersection where we were working.

  On Friday we had to say goodbye to Elvar, but nonetheless we had a great day where we had a woodcutting team, whilst the others were hammering nails into slats like there was no tomorrow (as Teo would say). We all worked together as a well-oiled boardwalk-creating machine, and we even took the gamble of starting to work from both ends of our long boardwalk. We were just the luckiest puffins in Iceland when all slats ended up fitting perfectly, with 2 ramps connecting the three frames making up for our long boardwalk. With those ramps, we made a structure with a nice gentle curve, following the slight downhill grade of the trail. Needless to say I have never been more proud of a boardwalk any of my teams have made (yes, I know that is a little dramatic, but it was just so pretty!).

That afternoon, when we were just finishing up, our final visitor of the week arrived – Siggi! He stayed over for a pancake dinner and pitched his tent in our camp. We had a great time on our last night as such a big trail team. The next morning, Kerry and Julie had to leave early to get on their bus back to Skaftafell, Siggi had to head back in that direction as well and Hannah was picking up Red Team to get them to their new location. The Blue team and I drove even further East to set up camp in Egilsstadir for a night before diving into the highlands!

 Max moving one of our smaller rocks of the day.. 

Hannah and her trail-widening work

Team down..

Getting them beams over to site

ICV efficiency!

On our evening hike

Working that strange dirt to get our frames in

Hit it Teo!

Long-distance cairn destruction

Icelandic version of “walk like an egyptian”

Bourbon-fuel!

Headed East!

Shortterms in Skaftafell

After leading the beautiful Green Team for a few weeks, René asked me to lead the short-term volunteers in Skaftafell. The Greens loaded me and my bags on a bus in Landmannalaugar, and after some hours I got to Skaftafell and back to the volunteer house Bölti, filled with 8 guys that were ready for their second week of volunteering. I was happy to have one more day off before we had to get to work, and now the snow had melted, I finally managed to run up to the top of Kristinartindar. As I was literally running, I didn’t wear that many clothes for a cold Icelandic summerday, so I was not quite prepared for the photoshoot I had to do at the top for an American couple that just got engaged there!

Back in the house, I found my co-leader Julie, who had already been leading the short-terms for the whole summer. She had almost finished up fixing the whole trail leading up to and onwards from Bölti, which had been a massive task with all the drains and steps that had to be put in. So as she continued on that job with half of the guys, my team hiked the long hike out to a project they had been working on the week before. They had built some pretty good stone steps followed by a river crossing over there, which looked all pretty sturdy. Both ends needed finishing up though. So where Jonny and Fabien went to fight with the upper last steps, Santi and Matt started finishing up the other side of the river crossing. Loads of enthusiasm from the guys even though it was pretty much storming; they learned quick and the project was coming along nicely pretty quick.  But as with every good project, a huge pile of mud and big rocks formed next to the trail and needed cleaning up. Loads of the landscape skills that I learned from Gunnar in the previous week where used here to make the trail bland in nicely with the landscape and to cover up that rock-mess. We ended up with a beautiful river crossing where even the clumsiest tourist could keep their feed dry. Too bad that the trail on both sides still is so flooded that gumboots might be a better option for footwear than actual hiking boots.. Maybe a good project for next year?

After a couple of days on that job, Julie and I still had some days left to make use of the fact we had 8 strong guys in our team. I took my half over the heath to finish the rockwork that the Red and Green Teams had been working on in their intro week. Not the easiest task, to make those 2 stretches of steps fit together exactly in an area that was completely depleted of all usefull rocks. Those guys definitely proved themselves there though, and the result was great. 

During the week, Julie and I did get away from the group on some occasions for some last-minute shopping whilst the boys were cooking, or for game of throne nights with the head ranger Habba. That’s also where we met Siggi, who now is my Skaftafell climbing-buddy. We went out climbing that weekend before me and Julie had to pick up our new load of volunteers – so good to be back on real rock!

In our second round of volunteers, we finally got some girls to join us. It was a pretty fun group we had there, and luckily some of them were eager to follow me up onto the heath again for some more rockwork in that area. The whole trail leading from the visitors centre up to the Sjónarnípa viewpoint is just such a mess, so this week we started out with defining a stretch of the trail that started at the viewpoint. I got Josh working on some rock lining, whilst Helen, Charlie and Deremyre started paving the trail with all the big rocks that were sticking up from it. Even more rocklining the next day, because that day we got about a 100 scouts from some big international scout moot to help us out even further up the mountain. The trail there is moving more and more towards the West every year, causing more and more moss to die off as people walk over it. So yes, I actually asked both the team and all those scouts to move this entire 200 meter stretch of trail about 2 meters to the East.. I am happy that at least the volunteers understood why we were doing this, and they started out smoothing the trail nicely – the scouts gave me a few funny looks but then started with some high-speed rock lining. It did seem that we got the good half of the scouts – Julie got a group that gave themselves a round of applause after stomping on some Lupin for a whole half minute.. We got some more scouts the next day, but eventually it was my team that after hours of work managed to create a whole new trail just 2 meters next to the now invisible old trail - let’s hope that it stays there this time and that we have saved the remaining moss! I had so much fun with this great team of volunteers – I definitely rolled over laughing more than once a day whilst working with them. 

That Friday, all the guides and rangers living down the hill had organized some sort of championships, where we showed up to as a “orange is the new black”  team with our beautiful waterproof pants. One of my main discoveries of the evening was that when you place a plank half on a deck and half suspended in the air and let Helen try and drink a beer at the far end of that plank, I am definitely not heavy enough to hold that all in balance. Also, it turned out that our volunteers (and leaders) definitely are the best at charging at glacier guides in a cardboard-made “boat”. It was definitely one of the best parties of the season. The hangover was also one of the worst, but at least Siggi was happy to drag me out onto the glacier for a nice refreshing hike on the ice the following day. That afternoon, my next trailteam arrived to Bölti – ready to head out to the East!

 The guys after their first project

So happy with this result

Jökulsárlón evening trip with Julie and the boys

Loved having these muscles to work with!

Powerrr!

Evening/storm climb with Siggi

Just some casual trailbuildin’

Think the trail will stay here this time? 

Risks of the job..

Thanks for the good week guys!

Hiking and climbing on a glacier with this guy - the best cure for a hangover!

Landscaping in Landmannalaugar

After a nice week off in the highlands with nice company, amazing nature and good weather, it was time to get the team back together for one last project. I met the team in Reykjavik, all full with stories of their holiday weeks but thrilled to get started again, this week in beautiful but busy Landmannalaugar. A lake near Landmannalaugar had decided to cover the southern road, hereby also cutting off access to the nice and quiet Landmannahellir campsite. As a result, we ended up staying at Landmannalaugar itself, together with what seemed about half of the tourist population of Iceland.

At least the camp warden let us stay on the only grassy space on the campsite, just a bit away from all the other snorers around – we only had to come up with a pretty good way to keep other campers off, which showed to be a neat challenge! Small no-camp signs didn’t do trick, so eventually we had to pull the “volunteers only-card”. That night we went for a quick stroll around the famous lavafield. This is also where we came upon our task for the week – landscaping around the trail that had been made by contractors last year. The trail became a lot easier to walk on, but at the same time also left a big scar and looked out of place in the landscape. Gunnar, a landscape architect, and his colleague Yiorgos came in to figure out what exactly needed to be done here, and we were going to give them a hand with the work. All his years of experience made Gunnar pretty amazing at his landscaping projects, and he taught us so many new things during the week.

We started out simple, collecting all the material –  a ton of stones and rocks – that had rolled away from the trail. In the meantime, the guys started out on decompressing some of the unwanted trails (desire lines) that had formed over the many years. This basically just involved them jumping around on big forks, turning the soil around and getting some air back into it so vegetation would have more of a chance to grow. When we had cleared out all the smaller rocks, Gunnar put us on the task to go into the lava field and start collecting bigger rocks. He would then build up some sort of a rockwall on the sides of the trail - especially there where there was a steep slope next to the trail. Not only to keep the material in, but also to make the trail flow more naturally into the landscape. He did so by cutting some sharp corners into the slope, upon which he would stack the rocks that we had collected for him. This all needed to be very stable of course, and was finished up nicely with dirt and small bits and pieces of vegetation.

Initially we thought that collecting the rocks would be a heavy, but easy job. And we were correct of half of that. Yes, it was a very heavy job, hauling those rocks around. But easy? Nope. Finding loose rocks that were big enough, but not so big they were impossible to carry, and that also would not leave a mark in the moss when picking them up showed to be quite tricky. At some point, Grace and  I even lost Pája in that maze of lava, and we had to climb up to a higher point to try and spot her. When we located her, we got a nice bucket-chain system going here, where we even managed to manouvre overloaded wheelbarrows through the field towards the trail.

There was also the occasional lost tourist that we had to pluck out the field and give a good reading on how important it is to stay on the marked trails in Iceland. The worst moment definitely came when we found a confused couple that said that they had gotten lost after they followed “the big group”. Wondering what this “big group” would be, I walked off into the field and quickly found a man that was “guiding” about fifty high school girls from England. All of them were pretty tired after wandering around in that field for a while, and I don’t even want to think of how much damage they might have done on their little tour. The guy tried to laugh it off and tried waving me away after I had walked over to them, but I didn’t want him to get away with this so easily. I pretty much shamed him in front of his full group, hoping he’ll think twice before he ever guides a group like that again in Iceland. After that little hiccup, we kept on scouting for rocks and eventually finished up the higher part of the trail.

The last couple of days, we spent on the steeper bit leading the trail from up the lava field down to the hut and campsite. Again, more building of rock walls on the banks, and also removal of those small stones that were lying all about. We didn’t quite have a place to put them, so Gunnar decided to make a new “hill” from scratch, by piling up all those stones and covering them up with moss we had plucked out in the field. To make the moss grow quicker, we drizzled over some kind of yoghurt (I think the strawberry flavor was accidental but at least is smelled nice). It looked pretty amazing afterwards, and did also block access to some desire lines we had just decompressed with our forks. Then there was more landscaping to do there to avoid shortcuts and new desire lines next to the trail. Up until now, we have done loads of landscaping by just covering whole bits of earth completely with moss and hoping it would stick. Gunnar, however, taught us how to mimic the landscape around whilst using a lot less moss. Time consuming, but it looked pretty neat afterwards – let’s just hope that the moss will grow.

On Friday, the road towards Landmannahellir finally opened. The team had another week to spend in Landmannalaugar, so I tried to convince them that Hellir definitely would be the best place to stay. My lovely puffins weren’t that easily convinced though, so we raced the truck over the still pretty flooded road to take a look (so nice to finally drive with an empty trunk). And yes, I’m pretty sure they loved that place – which meant I had to race back again so we could take our tents down and throwing all our stuff in the truck to set up camp at Landmannahellir. For me that was also the final night there, and Pája was so nice to make some space for me in her tent so we could have a cozy little sleepover.

Saturday was my last day with the team, and we had to get up early once more. There was a marathon going from Landmannalaugar over the Laugavegur trail, and we needed to protect our trail and landscaping from all those enthusiastic runners. We stood guard on some of the more critical spots, and cheered to the competitors as they embarked on their 55 (!) km run. After that, we made some pancakes and relaxed in the hut as I was waiting for my bus to take me to Skaftafell. Pája, Lukas, Grace and Thibaud – thanks for these amazing 6 weeks we had together, and for all your hard work this summer. It’s been such a pleasure to get to know all of you, especially your weird and quirky sides. See you at Leaders Training this spring?  

 At least rocks on the snow won’t leave scars..

A beautiful evening for hiking up the Blue Mountain

Finally something effective to keep tourists of the field

These 3 working on their landscaping skills

Finishing up our first bit of work - let’s see what it looks like in a year’s time!

Building a new hill in the landscape

Pája and one of her moss-babies

Job done!

Loving this campsite!

The girls guarding our trail from the runners below

Just one last picture before leaving these great vollies

Breaking Bedrock in the Westfjords

For some reason I always tend to forget how incredibly long the drive to the Westfjords is. I usually glance at a map to check the road numbers, and draw a straight line from the beginning of the Westfjords to our destination, this time Flókalundur, thereby forgetting that the road winds itself around the many fjords. But when we finally turned around the last bend, a lovely holiday home was waiting for us. Further away from the hotpot compared to when we stayed at the camping there last year, but at least we didn’t have to share two showers with the full camping. There weren't really enough beds for all 5 of us in this house, so Pája made her bed out on the deck until the rain forced her inside on the sofa a few days later.

The next day we drove the usual drive to Látrabjarg, but not before we got some extra veggies from the tiny shop at Patreksfjordur and had some lunch at beautiful Breiðavík. I think Pája nearly bursted into tears when we finally walked up to the puffins at the cliff-edge. Eventually we could drag her away from them and we headed out on the beautiful trail that takes you along the top of the cliffs and rewards you with some breathtaking views. Afterwards we had a quick stop at the Red Beach before heading back to our house for a dive in that hotpot at the seaside.

No more relaxing the next day; we had to get to Dynjandi to resume the work on the trail there. Last year it was gravelling; this year we had to build rock-steps on some of the trickiest sections of the trail. Steps had been made there, but they were all so old and had fallen over and created massive trip hazards. The guys started on the lowest bit on a section where the girls and me took the upper half to fix. And as Thibaud and Lukas rolled over their first massive rock, we hit.. bedrock. At first we were hoping that it was just a big rock in the soil that we could get out with a bit of effort. However, after a bit of jamming around with the rockbar, that hope disappeared as quickly as the water was coming down from the waterfall next to us. And so we spent the next few days chipping away more and more bedrock, trying to get holes big enough for the rocks we had found in the area and dragged over. Sometimes we were lucky enough to get big chunks out of that bedrock with a single hit, whereas other times we could be at it for ages and only get some small splinters off. Just below us, the guys were more lucky and were able to throw massive rocks into the holes that they had dug with much more ease. This is how we went on for three days- chipping, digging and dragging rocks around. It was nice that we both had a hotpot and swimmingpool close by, so our sore backs could relax a bit.

On Thursday we got a different job assigned to break the week: moving some information signs to a new location. No break for our backs though, as they were anchored into the ground with big concrete blocks. With loads of grunting and with trembling muscles, we did eventually manage to get them out of the ground. Whilst we were enjoying a pretty amazing grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, a tractor came to transport the signs over to their new location where some holes were already dug for them to go in. That afternoon was possibly one of my most frustrating hours this summer - putting those signs in straight, level and at the right depth was pretty impossible, especially with the wind constantly blowing the signs over. We sort of managed in the end, but unfortunately we heard later that the next team had pulled the signs out again and with the help of the farmer and his machines had put them back in. Straight this time (please don’t brag even more about it next time I see you Ali!).

That Friday was our last day of work before the holiday week, and we were back at our steps at Dynjandi. Me, Pája and Grace finished up our bit of the section we worked on, and started attacking another stretch of trail. And yes, also over there we hit bedrock.. By the end of that day it was not only the rock that was smashed to pieces! We left that job for the next team to finish off (sorry Blue Team) when we got too tired to lift our tools, and then drove off to Ísafjörður. Pája, Thibaud and Lukas were gonna spend their holiday week in Hornstrandir, so they were happy to get a ride up towards the ferry. Happy to have a week off, me and Grace drove to Reykjavik the next day. And the driving wasn't over there; I drove Grace and her boyfriend to Kerlingarfjöll the day after and then moved on on my own through the highlands towards Askja and Kverkfjöll. I had an amazing few days there before The Greens and me were at it again - this time in Landmannalaugar!

Just loving the day here at Látrabjarg

Energetic vollies at the Red Beach

Get that dirt in there girl!

Grace and Pája showing off their muscles

What an amazing workplace we had this week

These 2 and their rockbaby

Definitely the worst job of the season.. At least Blue Team fixed this right up for us the following week

..and then one of the best jobs this season. Love the trail these guys built here!

A moss marathon at Grábrok

We left the comfortable house at Snæfellsnes behind us and exchanged it for a week of wildcamping behind the Grábrok crater. And of course the wind was hauling over the field yet again as we were trying to get our kitchen tent up - only to die down as soon as we had made our camp.

Our monday started up nice and quiet with some litterpicking, although I did get some serious gagging reflexes when I picked up the wrong tissue - amazing how people seem to ignore the nice and clean toilets just down the road and use a hole in between rocks as one instead. Happy to switch over to picking up moss instead for the rest of the day.

Grábrok is a beautiful place, but has loads of scars in the moss from old hiking trails and desire lines. We started out with getting big chunks of moss from the lavafield across the road, so we had the big scars next to the trail covered up immediately. With spades we carefully dug out squares of moss and put them on big wooden boards for transport up the crater. When we were on our second, pretty heavy load and just about to cross the road, a car honked and made an emergency stop. An Icelandic woman jumped out and started screaming at us, about how we were doing stuff that was absolutely illegal. It took me a while to make it clear to her that we were actually trying to fix things, but it is good to know that there are locals around that keep an eye out and that are not afraid to tell actual moss-stealing tourists off.

Luckily we didn't have to do many runs with these boards of moss, as they were incredibly awkward to carry uphill. We changed over to the moss-shredding technique soon, as we also did in Snæfelsness last year. Here, you pluck pieces from the moss, shred it into its individual threads and put it in big bags to carry it over to the site where you'll plant it. And to plant it, you just spread the moss out, press it down and hope it doesn't blow away or die before it grabs on to the soil. We saw some patches that the ranger, Tóta, had planted last year, and this technique seems to work pretty well! So over the course of the week, we probably dragged about 600 kg of moss over the road and up the crater. I was pretty happy when we finally put the last bag of moss down whilst trying not to get blown off the crater.

The wildcamping was pretty fun, and very quiet for sure. Our only neighbours were the sheep, and our water came from the nearby river. And about 3-4 times a day we would all get into the car and drive to the nearest bathrooms, at Mathieus restaurant Hreðavatnsskáli, probably the most welcoming restaurant in the country. We went hiking on some of the evenings, found the nearest pool, and Tóta took us out exploring in the longest lavatube in Iceland. Our last night was a very stormy night. Luckily Mathieu had invited us for some goodbye-beers (thanks again for that) so we didn't get too cold. We did almost blow away the next morning when we needed to take down our tents and the meshtent. It wasn't like we weren't already very experienced with that, so we managed to pack everything before it would get taken by the wind, and we soon were on our way to the Westfjords!

Our campspot for the week

Grace having to push the gas-button down for our full cooking-session..

Grábrok-style dinner

Lupin lupin lupin..

Our first moss-loads

Cosiness during the moss shredding

Photobomb in progress

Two puffins killing each other at a cliff-edge

My orange army of moss-pluckers

Visiting the ice-men in the lavatube

Selfie-time at the glacier

Thibaud and his moss

Turf and Fire at Snæfellsnes

We left both our pickup and the bad weather at Vík, and headed over towards the west in a pretty cramped Skoda. Especially the last 2 hours must have been lovely for the guys in the back, with a week worth of food on their knees. After the stormy week of camping in Vik, the house that we could stay in at the peninsula was a welcome change. Still pretty tired from all the rockwork from the previous week, we were pretty happy to go on a nice walk along the coast on our day off on Sunday.

I met Jón as well that weekend, who gave me the tasks for the weekend. On Monday we started pretty enthusiastic with separating the turf from a few pretty big dirt piles. And not a chance that that task was done after that; we spent hours distributing the leftover turf over the area and covering it up with the turf again. Another spot that needed some extra dirt was the pretty aggressive zip line in the area. That thing launches tourists up pretty quickly, and we needed to make their landing a bit softer and less rocky. The best part of this job was of course trying out the zipline to see if we had made any difference or not. We also got the mucktruck, a motorised wheelbarrow, started and managed to speed our process up quite a bit with that thing. That is, until we emptied the tank within 3 dirt runs and had no fuel whatsoever left..

As we were about to put our tool down for the day, the rangers got a call from Jón, who had just discovered a fire. We all jumped in our cars and drove off, first still thinking it was just a little fire that just needed some good whacking with a shovel. However, when I drove over one of the first hills on the road, we could see a massive cloud of smoke above the lavafield. I don't think I've ever driven this fast in Iceland before. The fact that it hadn't rained for a while and the strong wind made the fire spread pretty fast. After about 2 hours of slamming the burning moss with spades and wet Hessian bags, it seemed more it less under control and we could head home to take care of our stinking clothes and hair. I definitely hope that the walker that dropped a cigarettebud in the dry moss saw the smoke clouds behind him/her and realised what that had caused. One positive thing here is though that Thibauds butt made the national news: http://www.ruv.is/frett/eldur-i-mosa-rakinn-til-sigarettu and http://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2017/06/13/fire_in_national_park_started_by_a_cigarette/

We got to sleep a little bit longer the next day, before we had to get back to our dirt-spreading business, this time with a fully-fuelled mucktruck. Towards the evening we were finally done with this job and ready to go on yet another adventure. First we headed down into an underground lavatube, on the same guided tour that I've written about in previous blogs. Then, after a quick dinner we headed out for our second mission of the night: exploring the canyon Raudfjeldgjá. We got further in than my team last year managed, and it was still as spooky, with dead birds floating in the stream and movements out of the corner of your eye that could just be the half-troll Bárður. I got my trousers soaking wet underneath one of the small waterfall as I spotted Grace and Thibaud whilst they were climbing on some of the trickier sections. Happy to all come safe back to the house again and enjoy some home-made cake.

On Wednesday we had to clean that same sheepshit-shed below the visitors centre that I had to work on last year. The only difference now was that the shit had finally dried up and just needed to be shoveled out. This did cause some nice sheepshit-scented dustclouds which gave us the best taste in our mouths ever.. At least it was a quick job and we were done just when the rangers arrived. Jón dragged me along with him to the site we would work on in the following week, meaning I had to leave my team for longer than an hour since I first met them. Is that the feeling that a mum gets when she brings her kid do daycare for the very first time? Jón got me over my empty-nest feelings with his life-stories, and soon we got to Grábrok. The drive there was longer than the time we spent together with the local ranger, Tóta, on looking at the trail, but the weather was nice and I had no complaints at all. I had to leave Jón to drive home alone as I got a ride back from Elvar who came over for a quick visit and gave us a hand with the job the next morning.

That job was probably the worst job for me; putting together some shelves for the workshop. Elvar and Thibaud were of course annoyingly good at this and could probably have done it blindfolded, whilst I was getting more and more frustrated with this worse-than-Ikea piece of s@!t.. Relieved to go outside later that afternoon to clean the beach at Dritvík. Jón had invited us and the rangers for dinner at his place, which was incredibly cosy. Needless to say that we all struggled a bit the next morning to get up for work and do our last task for the week; sorting out wood and old ecogrid and carrying it down to the now clean sheepshit-shed.

We decided not to leave the peninsula until Sunday, so we had the whole Saturday for some last explorations in this beautiful area. A local guide told us that we would probably kill ourselves if we would head up the glacier that day, so instead er hiked up to the treasure chest of the half-troll Bárður; Bárðarkista. Unfortunately we didn't find the actual treasure - we were told that to be able to find it, your mum should have given a virgin-birth to you at 17 and only fed you horsemilk for the first 14 years of your life. On top of that, you can never have had a single happy thought. We did get a nice hike out of it though, and me and the girls went on to explore yet another cave in the area. By the next morning, we had gotten our truck back and were on our way to a week of work and wildcamping at the Grábrok crater - more on that very soon!

All cramped up with our food

Trying to stay out of the wind on our hike

Thibaud in his beachwear

Pretty tough being a leader sometimes..

Dirt-distributors at work

Pája Powerrrr

Getting smoked like a piece of lamb next to the fire

Beach-cleaning with Grace

Thibaud and his new outfit

And more beach cleaning..

On our way to the treasure chest!

Windy rockwork at Dyrhólaey

Even after that storm we had in Skaftafell, the weather gods apparently didn’t believe we had had our portion of windy weather yet. We arrived to Vík as the wind was hauling over the campsite there, with hardly any shelter to find for our tents. That, plus a team that had never even seen our kitchen tents before made a pretty interesting combination for pitching that massive kitchen tent René had given us for the week. I tried not to wet my pants of laughing when looking at Grace who was trying to hold the back of the tent down whilst constantly being sprayed with the water coming off the flapping canvas. But finally, after some good muscle work from her and Lukas holding up the inner poles and Pája, Thibaud and me running around the tent to hammer the pegs down, it was more or less standing up straight. I can’t say that any of us slept well that night, worried that we would wake up with a big, empty spot where we had pitched the kitchen tent. The rocks we had put on its side had done their job, luckily, and we could have our first outdoor breakfast in an undamaged (but sightly pooped on by our bird-neighbours) kitchen tent.

We met the rangers Hákon and Helga at our worksite, Dyrhólaey, a little bit later that morning. It is a beautiful, little peninsula with loads of nesting birds and a small lighthouse on top of its cliffs. Because of the nesting areas, it is essential that the many tourists that come to visit actually stay to the trail. With Vík as its nextdoor neighbour, the rainiest place in the country, the trail does tend to get pretty muddy. After spending a day on widening a path at the lighthouse, we then spent the rest of the week doing paving of the path and drainage. Digging the holes for the rocks we had hauled over from the area was an incredibly muddy and wet job, and ended more than once in a mudfight. When we then finally got the rocks in the holes, the mud would immediately suck them stuck, making it even trickier to get them in place. We thought we would need as much drainage as possible, so every meter, we put in a drain filled up with small stones so the water could flow between the different bits of paving. That was a pretty big amount of work, so it was good that Helga, and later in the week Hringur (Landmannalaugar ranger from last summer:) came to help us out. When we finished that first section of trail, we unfortunately didn’t have the time to fix the other muddy sections with more paving. All we could there was building drainage, where in some instance a Y-shaped drain would (hopefully) catch the uphill water, and then guide it over and off the path. Also here, we used small rocks to fill up these drains so they wouldn’t fill and block up with soil over time. This meant loads of running back and forth with a wheelbarrow for the collection of the small rocks, and I think we must have passed at least 200 buckets through our hands when getting rid of all the dirt in a classic ICV bucket chain. Let’s see next year if this slightly experimental piece of trail work actually does its job or not.

After all that heavy lifting during the days, our daily soak in the hotpot was amazing for our muscles. Besides that, we attempted to hike up to the cliffs at Vík and failed miserably and didn’t even find the trail. We were more successful at our driving mission down the bumpy road 214, which lead us through some amazing highland-like landscape and a beautiful canyon at the end of the road. We were very much in tourist-mode that evening and became pros at taking pictures from our rolled-down windows in our truck. One night we got a visit from the fabulous Richard, and had a nice stroll and beers at the beach. The wind picked up again on Saturday, which is when we had to pack up our tents and other belongings. No truck for us for the next week, we swapped that one out for the Skoda of Purple Team. And then, absolutely cramped in, we drove off to our next location: Snæfellsness!

Happy team after the first day

At least not all walkers are afraid to get their shoes dirty..

Definitely need for waterproofs in this mud

Beautiful view to Dyrhólaey from the beach

Guess which puffin the sea brought ashore.. the first of our two visitors this week

Grace, Thibaud and Hringur getting started in some more drains

Mid-work pose

A semi-finished drain

Great night exploring the area

Job done!

Quite an improvement since photo 2

Steps and Stones in Skaftafell

Roger and I had finally managed to eliminate the boiler-flood-induced stink in our house Bölti, when Richard and René arrived to Skaftafell as well. We had just one evening with the four of us until we would pick the first intake of volunteers up at the visitors centre. And that moment is always pretty exciting, as these will be the people that you’ll share car, living space, work, food and so much more with for the summer.

Training week always follows a pretty similar pattern. We pick the volunteers up, cook them some dinner (usually potatoes, fish and salad for some reason) whilst they pitch their tents, and introduce them to the delight of the Icelandic desert Royal Pudding after. Then they are usually off to their tents pretty early - ready for Renés introduction talk and Rogers tool talk the next morning. After that, trailbuilding starts with in total 2 days of stone work and 2 days of wood work - or at least that’s the plan.

The stone work went very well again this year. I’m leading Green Team the first 5 weeks, which has Grace (UK), Thibaud (French), Lukas (German) and Pája (Czech). Together with Red Team, we tackled a pretty nasty section of trail up towards Sjónarnípa. Apparently 40% of the accidents with hikers in Skaftafell happen on that trail, so it needed to be taken care of quite urgently. Finding good rocks in Skaftafell is always drama - the many trailteams that worked there in the years before have pretty much raided the hills of all the usable rocks for drains and steps. However, apparently the new trend is that at least the steps don’t have to match each other perfectly anymore - the step surface should just be nice and flat, and with a nice front face as well. Of course they still have to be deep and heavy enough to prevent frost lifting. Another new trend is not to just have steps, but actually to create some paving in between steps as well. So that was a project both teams could put their teeth in to - a nasty section of old trail full of trip-and slip hazard. That afternoon, my team only concentrated on collecting the first few rocks, and with good lifting techniques when using our rocknets. We were looking for rocks that would fit well together, or in Rogers words “rocks that tesselate well together”. Pája misunderstood that fancy word pretty quickly and exchanged it for “testicles”, and yes, of course that now became Green Team’s unofficial name: Team Green Testicles..

The next day we could start with the actual building of the steps and the new paving. The guys started with building a new step with some massive rocks in front of the first original step, whilst the girls got working on some paving behind the only original step that was still acceptable. I had to get back into being able to use a rockbar in my own favor instead of just throwing it to the side to go in without any tools and pulling my back, but otherwise it was a great and productive day. Still had loads of building to do before lunch time, so the next day we had to be even more productive. Didn’t quite help that me an Richard went down for a party at the rangers place that night and didn’t get back until a few hours before we had to drag ourselves up the mountain again. Luckily the fresh weather woke us up and the teams worked very hard so eventually we finished some beautiful steps.

Then on to the second part of the training: woodwork. We only had time the rest of that day to saw all the parts we would need before getting dinner ready and listening to a talk from the head ranger, Habba. Before she came over, we still thought we could construct our wooden steps already the next morning and start installing them later that day. Habba got us out of that wonderful, ignorant bliss pretty soon when she told us a storm was coming over Skaftafell pretty soon. And she was right; at around 4 in the morning the first tent came down, and by 5.30 Roger was the only one that was still asleep in his tent. There was no way we could work with the strong gusts coming down from the glacier, so we spent the morning around the visitors centre. And also in the afternoon the weather didn’t improve enough for us to be able to give instructions without our voices (and ourselves) being blown away by the wind. So as the teams stayed at the house to work on their presentations, me ane Richard went down to prepare for the next day, so the teams could construct their wooden frames for their steps much quicker. And even for us it was difficult to do our sawing and hammering with the wind blowing the tools out of direction. The wind did luckily lie down just enough for us to be able to drive the teams to Jökulsárlón, for some photoshoots on icebergs and collection of glacier ice for our drinks for BBQ night the next evening.

And we were definitely ready for that BBQ. Friday was a hard day as we had to construct frames, carry all that plus our tools 40 minutes up the trail and then place them in. The construction went very quick do to the work that Richard and I had done, but we needed a few runs to get everything up. The rain didn’t make things easier as we were trying to decide how long the steps had to be and where they had to start and end. Putting the sleepers on which the steps would rest definitely took the longest as they take quite a bit of digging and measuring before they are leveled out and in place. After that the securing of the steps with stobs and getting the decking in didn’t take too long, and before the evening fell (as much as it does that in Iceland), we were on our way up to Bölti, where René, Sophie and Julie were waiting for us with lamb legs and beers. The rangers came up the hill as well to see the presentations the teams had made about what they learned that week and then stayed for dinner and beers. Such a cozy evening, and so happy that we didn’t have to get up that early the next morning.

Normally Saturday is our travel day, but this year we decided to go hike the beautiful hike towards Kristinartindar, which the rangers had just opened the day before. We had a beautiful day, with spectacular views. On Sunday we did have to move on to the next location, but not before the now almost traditional boat ride at Jökulsárlón, where we parted ways with the Red Team. As they were Eastbound, we drove back to the West again, where we would have a week of work at Dyrhólaey.

Green Team criticising their first bit of trail to fix

One of the first rocks of the season!

What NOT to do at a work site

Team Green Testicles..

Start of the woodwork

 Happy puffins at Jökulsárlón

Just hanging out on an iceberg..

Thibaud killing Grace..

Having fun on our hike up

Back with the beautiful Soph

Prepping and packing for the Icelandic summer

After a pretty good amount of travelling this spring, summer was finally on the doorstep. Temperatures in Copenhagen were rising, and the days were becoming too sunny to spend inside an office, so it was time to get ready for Iceland. Had a lovely trip home to my family in the Netherlands, but after that the combination of finishing up at work and getting ready for Iceland became a double full time job.

But finally, all my outdoor gear (plus some nice new stuff from Friluftsland) was stuffed in my backpack and the rest of my room was on the attic. No more pretty dresses, fluffy towels or even a pillow - only the usual black Fjällräven trousers in a combi with horribly discolored t-shirts, hiking boots with woolly socks and a microfiber towel. It was slightly surreal to close the door of my apartment behind me, knowing that my “house” from now on would be my tent again, but very pleased to head up North again.

No time to run around much I’m Reykjavik, like last year. After just a day there were I had a quick lunch date with Halldora, and helped René and Roger out with packing the last boxes with dried food, Roger and me took off to Skaftafell. We thought it would be a pretty relaxed first night at Bölti, until we stepped through the door and were welcomed by the smell of mold, wet carpet and mouse piss. The boiler had broken down and was leaking steaming hot water all over the laundry room, which had now a 5 cm water layer on its carpet. Not the best thing to arrive to, and getting all the stuff floating around in the room and ripping out the carpet took a full day. But finally, it was time to inspect the trails - are our old steps in place, and what are the trailteams gonna work their muscles on next week? More on that in the next update!

Packing food from our new (but hopefully temporary) workshop

This year..

...and last year. Amazing that the rocks haven't moved and that the moss is growing (apart from the desire line that some stubborn tourists might have created)

This summer..

.. and last summer. Happy that the short term teams managed to finish them

2017..

..and 2015. A few more rocks then, quite a bit more grass now

Climbing missions in Chamonix

After coming back from skiing with Claire in Andorra, I had only 3 days in Copenhagen before heading out to Chamonix for Easter with the guys. Karan and I flew over to Geneva where Cyp came to pick us up and drove to his families chalet in the mountains. Coming from rainy Copenhagen, Chamonix really was just a breath of fresh ear (until some sort of pollen allergy kicked in). First thing on the list was to buy some more climbing gear, like prusiks and a helmet, and then go for a little stroll in the area for a nice view onto Mont Blanc.

After a good night’s sleep, we counted and checked our gear and then headed out for our first climbing adventure for this trip. The weather was beautiful as we did our one hour approach to the wall at les Cheserys, just about 10 minutes from the Swiss border. A lovely trail to start with, but followed by some patches of snow that were still lying about on the steep slopes. The guys got the ropes out as I stumbled and slid my way towards them, we got our sunblock going and then we could finally get started on our climb. Cyp led us up all I-can’t-remember-how-many pitches of that route, which brought us up to some pretty nice heights. All the hard work was definitely on him, as especially my rope was a bit too thick to slide through his belay device nice and easy. It’s quite hard to see who was more tired every time I got up to him at the different ankers – him from dragging that rope up and through, or me from climbing. Karan followed last on a, luckily for Cyp, thinner rope. We enjoyed the view at the top for a while, until we really started to freeze in the wind – whilst still burning our skin in the sun. We rappelled down to our sweaters and jackets as quick as that now is possible when in a group of three, and headed down to the car again – time for and après-climb beer! Apart from the great climbing, it was also great to have Cyp freshen us up on how to secure yourself at an anker and how to rappel down from a route without plunging yourself into a free-fall down towards your comfy hiking shoes.

Saturday was a nice and easy day. There was a cosy market in town where we did our grocery shopping, and then had a good lunch back at the house. Not all relaxing that day though, as we hiked our way up towards a viewpoint onto a glacier nearby, where we also met some friends of Cyp. The rain had now finally found us again though, so we got ourselves down again and spent a night with some wine and good dinner back at the chalet.

We started Easter Sunday with a nice breakfast, and then went for another climb. We expected some rain in the afternoon though, so no multipitches this time. Instead we did some really nice shorter routes at La Joux. With no doubt, the best climb was the one that Cyp found in a cave-like bit of rock. We fitted ourselves in the narrow space we had between two massive rocks and Cyp started climbing up and out from them, whilst trying to figure out where the next bolt or anker was hiding itself. He disappeared out of sight for a while until we finally could see him through a small crack in the rocks above us – time for me to work my way up. Easier said than done though, and needed a good amount of coaching from Cyp from above and Karan from below me before I finally made it up to the anker – but at least the view from there was great again. Karan made it up in no-time – as usual – and that was our climbing for the day. That night was our last night there, and some of Cyps friends came over for dinner and wine – great and cozy times again with fun people!

On Monday we just had time to squeeze in another hike before we had to head back to Geneva again. The view was nice, but nothing else than we had seen yet – until we turned a corner and had an epic view onto one of the crazy-shaped mountains of the area. We relaxed there on the rocks in the sun for a while, until it unfortunately really was time to head back again. Karan and I took a head start with our flight, but quickly got overtaken by Cyp as he probably was chilling on his direct flight back to Copenhagen whilst we were sat waiting at Frankfurt airport for our last connection. We had only been gone for 5 days, but to me it seemed so much longer – definitely wouldn’t have been a better way to spend the Easter holiday this year. Thanks so much for taking us with you to Chamonix Cyp – next year again?

 Headed for our first climb

Chillin’ at the top

Awesome views on our way up

Cyp posing for his new profile pic

Any suggestions here?

Stuck in a cave!

Thanks for the lovely weekend guys!

Snowy slopes at Pas de la Casa

Let’s take a quick jump back in time – to Christmas 2015, which I spent at Milford Sound in New Zealand. My boss back then didn’t want me to spend Christmas on my own, so he put me up with the lodgies from Mitre Peak Lodge. It was a crazy and fun bunch of people and we ended up having a lot of fun that night and during all the other parties and cozy evenings at Milford that followed the months after. Stepping into a group of total strangers is almost never the most comfortable thing, but there was the lovely Claire who worked at the lodge and just was the most welcoming person ever. We stayed in touch since, and this winter she invited me to come over to Andorra for a visit and to get some skis on. That wasn’t a hard one to think about so a few weeks ago I got on a plane to sunny Barcelona and took a bus on to snowy Andorra.

The further we drove, the better the mountains looked. Eventually we got over a high snowy mountainpass and we looked down on a little town that definitely wouldn’t win a prize in a beauty contest; Pas de la Casa. The atmosphere in town turned out to be so good though, that soon I didn't see the less-pretty things of the town anymore (although I might have kept a better eye on that less-pretty thing called dog poo). Claire works in a rental shop next to the slopes there, Ski Pas 83, which is the cosiest and most chilled out shop I have ever been to. If you’ll ever go to Pas de la Casa, you should definitely get your kit there and Claire and the guys will give you the best advice! She came to pick me up and we headed out to her apartment for some quick dinner and some wine before meeting her mates in a bar in town. That night I learned how to blame everything on the altitude that Pas de la Casa is at, including the speed with which a pint suddenly hits you and the awfulness of the hangover the next day.

That hangover disappeared pretty quickly the next morning when Claire dragged me out for my first ski lesson. The fact that I struggled to ski straight down a half meter-hill onto a moving “carpet” didn't make me feel more comfortable about those slopes that were definitely higher than half a meter, but at least we had made a start. I snow-ploughed my way down our first, basically flat slope whilst Claire was shouting instructions at me. Up again, this time with a rope that would drag us up as we were holding on to it. That was another good display of my absolute clumsy-ness, up to a point where Claire both had to hold my poles and literally push my butt towards that slope. Getting that rope up was a pretty harsh strain on the arms though, so after a few rounds we decided it was time to hit the skilifts and some blue slopes for the rest of the day. I definitely did not have the perfect technique, especially with my bum sticking out - and with Claire throwing snow balls at me every time I took that not-so flattering position. But all in all a great first day of skiing. No quiet night at home afterwards though. One of the guys, Barney, was playing in a hotel some valleys down the road that night. Great music, followed by a pretty chaotic ride home through the mountains - such a fun night!

Saturday was a pretty cloudy day, and we ended up in a snow cloud as we took a lift higher up and skied down the other side of the mountain, into Grau Roig. So much patience from Claire as I skied down the steeper parts of that slope at absolute turtle-speed. Pretty happy to make it back to Pas in one piece a few hours later; time for some hours at the pool and then a cozy movie night back at Claire's apartment.

Sunday was Claires first day off, but the weather didn't look to good up the mountain. That plus some pretty sore knees made us decide to stay low and to do some cross country skiing in Grau Roig instead. Not that those long, thin skies made me any less clumsy though - it only took a little bit of a downhill gradient before I ended face down in the snow, unable to get myself up again. We worked our way down the trail with the occasional crash- luckily just missing the huskypoo lying on the trail at an inch every time.

After that day, every day was about skiing down the slopes in the area, trying to get as far away from Pas as possible.  We didn’t get that far on Monday though, where Claire and I skied down to Grau Roig and my blood sugar hit rock bottom about halfway down - even a good lunch couldn't save me anymore there so we just headed back to Pas after that a bought a good amount of muesli bars to bring along the next days. The real difference came when Chris gave me some lessons and took me down my first red slope and then up and down the next mountain – thanks so much for your tips Chris!

Thursday was unfortunately my last day of skiing – but it was also an amazing one. Claire and I went on a mission that brought us further on the slopes than ever. After our pizza-lunch at a beautifully frozen lake in the mountains Claire had to get back to the shop so she raced of on her snowboard as I was heading away from Pas again. Everything was going so well – the mountains were beautiful, the weather was perfect again and the slopes were pretty quiet – until I had to get off one of the skilifts and nearly skied into a little hut whilst trying to avoid a snowboarder that had stranded right after that lift. Just one of those typical times where you whished you would have been just a little bit more concentrated at that second. My knee gave a nice cracking noise and I was in a bundle up against that hut. Definitely didn’t want to end up on one of those rescue-sledges though, so I thought the most important thing was to keep moving down towards Pas before my knee would stiffen up too much. Actually had another nice three, four runs down to Pas before ending up on the couch in the shop. So happy though that it didn’t happen on my first day of skiing, and that nothing worse happened. That night me and Claire had our last night out together, which was just as fun as all the other days and nights we had gone out in Pas that week. After a slow Fridaymorning, we had some lunch together, but eventually had to say goodbye when her dad came to pick her up. And then there was just the evening left! Another one of Barneys amazing concerts, and this time he got all of us transported in a good old fan-bus. Coming back to Pas, we had another few beers before I curled up on the sofa for one last night there. Just a few hours of sleep there before I had to catch the bus back to Barcelona.

Thanks Claire for having me over and for the amazing times – hope to see you there again next year and we’ll head even further over the mountains! And also to the other guys at Pas and from Ski Pas 83, I had the best time with all of you and can’t wait to do it all over again. Next adventure: climbing in Chamonix with Cyp and Karan!

First few minutes on the slopes! 

Flying carpet to the top!

Getting back into “duck-pose”

Fridaynight with Claire and the guys

Paybacktime.. #snowballfight

Still snowing!

Crosscountry mission at Grau Roig

Another beautiful day on the slopes

Thanks for the great time lovely!

A guide to “Leadering” in the Lake District

Whilst writing my last blog, I was on my way to Leaders training for Iceland Conservation Volunteers. This time my writing spot is a bit close to the ground – on a couch in the climbing hall in Copenhagen. It is extremely packed today so not too good for climbing, but at least very cozy to do some writing.

The weather in England upon arrival was amazing, which made the waiting times for the trains so much better. Just before getting on my second train towards Windermere, I got a text from Alexis “I can see you! Hop in coach E!” Time to put my knitting needles away and spend the rest of the ride catching up with this crazy Lebanese guy. We were the first ones to arrive to Windermere and it turned out that our way of sightseeing was going into the local fancy supermarket and to be amazed about all their awesome products (yes, Danish supermarkets do really suck so much that I get excited walking into supermarkets abroad). René arrived just in time to keep us from emptying that store, and after a nice cuppa and some catching up with him and the others that now had arrived, we took off to our base camp, on the other side of the lake. We got our beds of the week ready by throwing our sleeping bags over the bunks and then went down to the kitchen, whilst all others were slowly arriving. Amazing to see the ones that I had previously shared mesh tents with, but also so many new faces (but with names very recognizable from the phonebook of our leaders phones). We had a very René style, Italian dinner that night – deepfrozen pizza – and then turned in pretty early to get ready for the first day of training the next day.

The first day was all about good leadership, where Toby talked us through his presentation on the subject and let us do some exercises, like “draw the perfect leader”, how to do risk assessment for a project and how to give the first tooltalk to a group of volunteers for such a project, how to deal with an emergency (in case your risk assessment sucked) etc. At some point he made us all stand in a circle, holding a long rope, got us blindfolded and appointed me as the leader that had to make the group form a square with the rope. It took a bit of time and involved quite a few confused moments (especially when I figured out a bit late that Roger and Roger were standing next to each other, which did not make the job any easier) – but when we took our blindfolds and taped-off swimming goggles off, we were standing in a pretty nice square.  

Friday was the Alexis’ time to shine, with his presentation about LCV, Lebanon Conservation Volunteers. The program there is quite different, not only because the very different (hotter!) climate, but also the different projects itself are quite different. I am definitely a cold weather-loving person, but it would be awesome to check their projects out one day. After that presentation, he lead us straight into the next one – search and rescue. Pretty much all of us have a first aid certificate and would be able to help out with minor injuries on the field, but getting somebody out when he has a broken leg, or worse, is another massive step up. Jacob was our fearless teamleader for the group that I was in, and after a bit of searching where we walked parallel to each other over the hilly property, we found Roger in a ditch, spread out over some logs. His Oscar-worthy acting capabilities convinced us immediately that he was both unconscious, had a broken leg and possibly also some broken ribs. We made a stretcher out of some rockbars and a few jackets and stabilized his leg by binding it to his other legs with our belts. Absolutely failing in keeping my pants up around my waist, we then made our way back to the houses whilst Ben went ahead to guide our walking so we wouldn’t break our own legs or drop roger in the stream. If I ever have to safe somebody for real, then I’ll definitely have to remember to cover him with some jackets (sorry for leaving you cold in the rain Roger), but otherwise it went pretty well.

After a good lunch, the local rangers Claire and Sara took us out for some path surveying up the hill behind the camp.  Plenty of rain to turn the trail into a mud-nightmare, and us into wet poodles. Sophie took René, Niall and me (in my pajamas) out to stock up food and beers for the last two nights. That Friday evening we spent having dinner and hanging out by the fire with some wine and whiskey. I would miss my Icelandic class that evening, but I made pretty much up for that when René sat down to teach me and Anna some of the language. Amazing how a 1-1 conversation with a fluent speaker teaches you more in 20 minutes than 2 hours of class.

On Saturday it was time for the real deal – some trailbuilding on an uphill path near the ferry coming from Windermere. We got divided up in groups that would work on the different sections, with all quite different problems. We had some wooden steps coming down, where the lowest step was washed away by water coming out of a gully next to the path, which then continued a long way further down the trail. So not only did we have to fix the steps by putting in a revetment and building another step down towards the level of the trail, we also had to divert all that water off the trail. Some of us started digging a drain downhill, whilst we also were collecting bigger rocks to enforce the downhill side of the drain. As soon as we started diverting some of the water away from the path, me and Grace started working on the step-part of this project. Our sawing skills were put to the test when we put a more diagonal revetment in, and our muscles were challenged when we were hammering in some stakes with the biggest sledgehammer I have ever seen. We just hammered in our last over-sized nail as the others were putting the last “tombstone” in for their drain, and that was our first project for the season finished! This training week was of course ended with the traditional Icelandic-style BBQ, complete with roasted lamb legs and chocolate bananas. The evening got later and later, and somehow we ended up singing pirate shanties till 5.30 in the morning, drinking whiskey and finishing up the last chocolate.  Didn’t wake up the next morning until Sophie shook me out of my bed – just in time before Charlotte came to pick me up.

I met Charlotte back in 2013, when I did my first bit of trailbuilding in Skaftafell. We stayed in touch since and she invited me to come stay with her in her house near the lakes after the training. I wasn’t worth much that Sunday - being a hangover passenger on those windy Lake District roads is not a pleasant experience. Monday was a better day though, and we managed to get a beautiful hike in before I had to head back to Manchester to catch my plane.

All in all we had a great week over there at base camp. Thanks René for getting us together, and all the others for being such awesome trailbuilders and team leaders. And Charlotte for having me in your house and taking me on that sweet-as hiking mission! On Thursday I’m off to Andorra to catch up with Claire and to go for some winter sport adventures. Can’t wait!

Drawing our “perfect leader” - photo by René

Cosiest set-up for a presentation room ever - photo by René

Ben to the rescue and Roger being a first-class actor

Getting ready to put in some steps - photo by René

Getting them stobs in 

Job done!

Happy team leaders after a good day’s work

Always tricky to get those waterproofs off.. 

Starting on a lovely hike with Charlotte

So muddy!

Diary of a trailbuilder in Copenhagen

Whilst sat on a plane to Manchester, I figured it finally was time to get started on my blog again - although it just seems days ago since I posted my last update.

Life back in Copenhagen turned out to be busy as ever. I’ve been back at work with the university and getting started on a new research project in the lab, which has been very exciting. And on those days it wasn’t so exciting, there always was the climbing hall for a good climbing-fix and with my favourite outdoor store, Friluftsland, on the way there to keep my addiction to outdoor gear going. Being back in Copenhagen also taught me how easy it actually is to get out of Copenhagen, to more outdoor adventures. Swedens beautiful forests are just a train ride away, which is great for weekend hikes. But also flying out to other countries is so easy with the airport just 20 minutes away from my apartment.

Bergen was my main destination the past 6 months. Not only because of the nice hikes you can do in the area, but also because of my awesome and cosy friends over there. During my visits we ended up hiking in all sorts of weather, from beautiful sunny weather to typical Bergen-rain and with the occasional snow cloud coming through. No matter the weather though, we always ended up in the same cafe by the end of the weekend for some great Norwegian waffles. 

My last trip to Norway last February was a little bit more east-bound, where my climbing buddy Sebastian had convinced me to join in the Rjukan Ice festival. I’ve not been this cold for a long time - even the attick that we slept on was so cold the water in my bottle froze. At the last day I became familiar with the concept of “screaming barfies”. Yes, it is really what it sounds like - your hands get so cold that when the blood starts flowing back into them this tickles your nerve endings in a way that just make you want to scream your lungs out and throw up your last-consumed energy bar. Very happy that I didn’t get to experience that last part though.. Apart from that, the weekend was great. Climbing up frozen waterfalls using iceaxes and crampons on your feet definitely is as awesome as I hoped for. We got to use some sweet as gear and were surrounded by so many other climbers which created the best atmosphere. During the evenings, there were talks from people that must have been born without a sense of fear and who showed photos of their incredible missions. I’ll definitely be spending a good part of my salary in Friluftsland before winter next year to gear up for more ice climbing adventures.

Still a while to go before that though! The start of a new trailbuilding summer in Iceland is only just over 2 months away. That’s also the reason for me flying to England today, as we’ll have our leaders training in the Lake District this week. This will be a good opportunity to learn some more trailbuilding and leading skills, and that in the company of twenty-odd other trail- and mudloving people. After that I will be at work for a bit before heading of to Andorra to meet Claire from Milford Sound (NZ) and hopefully to not break my leg whilst skiing. For Easter, me and the climbing guys will fly off to Chamonix for hopefully some good adventures over there as well. So many cool things coming up the next months - stay tuned for these and more nerdy trailbuildling- and gear-talk! 

Sunday-mission with the guys and Nicole (photo by Nicole)

Autumn hike in Skåne 

Once a climber, always a climber.. 

Beautiful Norway - hike Osterøy

Amazing Iceclimbing in Rjukan

Even our eyelashes froze this day

Another aspect of Iceclimbing: frozen bananas

Final days in Ásbyrgi

Final week! We spent just one more night with Nicola, Chris and their team in Mývatn before heading over to the other teams that had already met each other in Ásbyrgi. And let that just be the night where the northern lights started to show up! We stayed up most of the night watching the sky from our campsite; absolutely amazing.  We got to Ásbyrgi  pretty sleepy the next day whilst the rain was coming down and had our last race against the weather to pitch our tents before the inner tents all turned into personal swimming pools.

And of course there was work to do up in the area of Ásbyrgi. We used our last 2,5 days as a trailteam on a trail through a nearby forest  (yes, a forest in Iceland!). The lake next to the trail had been cutting in so much in the bank over the years that on several places cavities had developed underneath the path. Worst case scenario, the path could collapse just as a hiker steps on it, so we really had to fix these sections. The section of the trail that we dealt with that afternoon was so  eroded that we decided to move the path completely. We got out our spades, mattocks and saws, and started clearing out a new way, whilst covering up the old path with the vegetation and moss that we got out. Sadly, also some of the trees had to come down, which we then used to block off the old path with even more.  We finished in time for dinner and got back to camp where we finally got to see the other trail teams again. It had been 6 weeks or so since we last saw each other, so it was great catching up with everybody again. They all had so many stories to share, and it was nice to hear what they had been up to on their locations.

For the next 2 days, we continued working at the lake. For the other two sections of the trail that we had to deal with, we decided to enforce the bank next to the trail instead of diverting it as we had done previously. And how do you enforce a bank? Yes, with nice wooden revetments. We did a bit of digging here and there to prep the bank, collected wood and then started constructing. It was a bit of puzzlework, but after a day of hard work, we had put in a really nice revetment that will hopefully keep the lake away from the trail, and will keep the trail from eroding. The good weather continued into the evening, where we drove off to Húsavik to shop for beers and wine for the final BBQ the next day and for a nice picnic at the pier.

On our final working day, we finished up our revetment project by making the 2 ends of the trail fit together. Just one more tree to take down, from which we built a nice step up to compensate for the height difference, and that was it for the year! Parts of both team Blue and Purple had come over to our worksite as well to finish the other section that needed a revetment and we all managed to be done with work early on that beautiful summer day. To celebrate the finishing up of this very last project, we borrowed some paddle boats and went for a paddle on the lake. It didn’t take long for the first one to take her clothes off and to jump in the water, and within no time most of us were in the water. Eventually, we had to get back into our clothes again and get back to camp. René arrived pretty soon after, together with Chris, Nicola and the others – and of course he brought along the traditional lamb legs for the end-of-summer barbeque. And just like last year, it was such a great evening.

The next morning we broke down camp and headed back to Reykjavik. We really tried to be in Borganes before closing time of the pastry shop, but we failed on that one – again.. So fuelled on cookies that were still lying about in the car, we went on to Reykjavik, where we dropped everybody off at the campsite. That evening we all went out in the city- our first night out in civilization in many weeks, and we had a great time. Sadly, that night was also the night to say goodbye to everybody, which like always was a pretty hard moment. At least I still had one more day to spend in Reykjavik with Nicola and Chris- time to go to the penis museum! After spending some time gazing at all those specimens, we decided it would be better to just go and get a beer somewhere, which we did for the rest of the day. Nicola had an early flight to catch, which totally would have missed if it wouldn’t have been for me and Chris dragging her out of bed at 3 in the morning. And then it was my turn to go, back to Denmark .

So that was it for this Icelandic summer. Thanks René, for letting me work with you for these months, and for the great times. And also to all the teams, you guys have been amazing and I couldn’t have wished for any better people to explore all those awesome locations we went to with. And Chris and Nicola, it was so amazing to see you puffins again – lets repeat this next year and put together our superteam?

By now we have just entered the new year – hopefully yet another one with more trailbuilding and adventures. I’m wishing you all a great 2017, and stay tuned for more blog updates!

Still failing to take good pictures of the Northern Lights - at least it gives a bit of an impression of our skies that night!

Serena on her way to work

Getting our revetment-construction ready to strengthen our trail

Teamwork!

The latest tree-cutting technique from ICV..

So happy to work with these puffins again!

Placing our last step for the summer

Just one more of our ever-so-stylish group foto’s - thanks for the amazing weeks team!