Into the Highlands

As I re-packed my dry tent and clothing, I did my best to compartmentalize the previous day. Between this trip, thoughts of new romance, and my Dad’s care needs, I was being pulled in three directions to three different spots on the planet.

Outside I discovered I wasn’t the only bicyclist launching a serious expedition from this place:

It’s cool how we have similar adventures over similar terrain but create these absurdly customized vehicles. Between that bike and mine, every single component and piece of gear is different.

This sign was one of many, trying to warn away the casual tourists. Gasoline wouldn’t be a problem for me, but food might.

A brief downhill ride gave me a nice panorama of this odd treeless land. How much longer would the road be smooth enough to coast like this? The digital map was showing a sinister dotted line ahead.

Just after the road tilted upward, I met a cyclist going the other way:

He said he was just finishing up the “Iceland Divide“, a route that crosses the interior of the country on mostly unpaved roads and rough trails. There are different versions of the route depending on who you ask, but the one my friend was doing went north-to-south and covered about 350 miles.

“I wanted to do it a year ago with friends,” he said, grinning. “We were planning it forever. But, you know… Pandemic. Now I’m doing it solo. It was easier than I thought. The weather was mild. You’re just doing this road? You’ll be fine! No worries.”

After our conversation, he took off and I decided to walk down the edge of the road and check out another of those amazing moss-covered streams I’ve been seeing all around Iceland:

The carpet-like feel of the moss is amazing. And the sheer volume of it!

I kept thinking of the green shag rug that used to be in the living room of my childhood home.

The road curved away from the lake, and the land on either side became what I can only call “more Icelandic.” Any vegetation taller than a hand faded away, leaving only moss and scattered blades of grass on the rounded hillsides. Every now and then the lumpy hills would gather up into a peak, with a fuzzy streak of green crowning the windward side like the hair of a balding giant. Elsewhere in deep folds where streams cut the hills, thick beds of fresh moss glowed with a green so intense it seemed unnatural, even dangerous, like the water feeding them was too powerfully enchanted and would melt down your body if you were foolish enough to be seduced by it.

Beware, traveler! You are in the realm of the Gods now…

In a couple of hours, I crossed a bridge and the high-quality pavement turned into hard earth coated with gravel. It was bad for my narrow tires, but I decided to push ahead. At least the gravel wasn’t thick, which would force me to dismount and walk.

I was rewarded for my persistence with a weird sight: Two rivers carrying different kinds of dissolved rock were slowly mixing together in a lake.

I paused to walk around, and discovered some kind of busted-up footing right on the edge of a cliff, as though years ago some extremely Nordic locals had installed a diving board.

It was lovely and I took plenty of pictures. I also picked up lots of rocks, and I swear, every dang time I turned one over there was a spider attached.

Just after this spot, the road pitched upward and the gravel became loose. I pushed the pedals to give my rear tire more traction, but I still lost control of the bike multiple times and had to put my feet down in a hurry.

I had to dismount the bike and push awkwardly through the carpet of gravel, as the road switchbacked up away from the lake. This was bad. If the road stayed like this and I had to push the bike for the rest of the day, it would be well after midnight before I got to the Landmannalaugar campground and I would be brutally tired. Making things worse, the cloud cover would combine with the dark shade of the land to obscure the road, and I would be pushing the bike too slowly to operate the generator in the wheel. I would have to find my way by putting my USB flashlight on my helmet and swiveling it all around.

To my great relief, I only had to push for another half an hour. The road went over a hill and the gravel thinned out on the other side as the ground became more rocky.

It also got even more ruggedly beautiful.

I could ride – slowly – for the rest of the day, but there were still patches where the mud or the gravel would suddenly thicken and I would have to flail wildly and stop. Falling over on a loaded bike is always dangerous, even at just a few miles per hour. Your limbs could tangle up in just the wrong way and you could sprain something terribly, or something small might fling itself out of your bags and you won’t notice until five hours later. Or worst of all, you could fall over while a car is trying to pass you, and get crushed by a driver with no time to react.

Bike touring! I’m doing a great job selling it, yeah?

Seriously, though. I grumbled a bit whenever the bike lurched, but the landscape was just magical. I paired it with the soundtrack to “The Black Cauldron” in my headphones and had a marvelous time.

Soon I passed into the official nature reserve lands.

Just beyond the sign was a rushing river, moving alongside the road. In my head I worried: “Is this the sort of thing I’m going to have to cross with the bike?”

The day moved on, and got darker, but never fully dark of course. The road was rough but intact. If I was back home and saw a road with this texture under this much rain, I would never attempt it on a bike, but the soil here was different. What looked like thick mud was actually more like hard-packed volcanic sand.

When I reached the turnoff to the Landmannalaugar campground in the center of the preserve, I’d been on the bike for over 8 hours, and my GPS needed charging.

The terrain was so neat – and the road so hilariously rutted – that I had to make a short video.

The final approach to the campground involved fjording a sizable puddle, fed by a small river. It would have swamped my saddlebags, so I diverted to the pedestrian path and crossed a cute little bridge instead.

When I rolled into the camping area I beheld a long row of parked vans and trucks, and a flat valley scattered randomly with tents of all kinds. There were no marked spaces. Some areas were turf suitable for anchoring a tent; others were washes of gravel. Campers had obviously tried to find a balance between usable ground and isolation from neighbors.

On the far side of the valley I found a cluster of buildings, next to a few trailheads that wandered away into the hills. It was the facilities of an RV park: Stall showers, sinks for washing dinnerware, a few tables sheltered from the weather, and a small shop with some basic hiking gear. This would do nicely, except so far I couldn’t see any sources of food.

I also noted that one could embark on several milti-day hikes from this spot. I wondered how many people in a typical season took a shuttle up here and then walked back down to the coast. Sounds like a cool adventure!

I finished my survey, and got busy with the tent. It wasn’t very hard to find a decent spot of open ground. As soon as I crawled inside I felt the wind pick up dramatically, and it was pushing one wall down against my head, so I had to get up and rotate everything.

While I was doing that, a guy crawled into a tent near mine and started playing an audiobook in German, loudly enough to disturb other campers. A few minutes later a guy crawled out of a different tent, trudged over, and asked him to turn off his book, speaking English with a thick Polish accent. Interesting to hear it used as a common language.

I went back inside, snug in my long johns and sleeping bag, and listened to a very mild rain pattering on the skin of the tent, sounding like pitched-down radio static.

Half an hour later, just as I was falling asleep, I heard a man yelling in the distance. He sounded drunk and overtired: Somewhere between happy, furious, and insane. His voice echoed all over the valley. He would gibber for a few seconds and then go quiet for a minute or so, then start up again. A few other people yelled at him but it had no effect.

“Glad I brought earplugs,” I thought, and stuffed them in. A while after that the temperature dropped and I dug out my wool hat.

I dreamed there was a kitten sleeping on my head.