ICELAND - The Laugavegur Trail - 2022

Hello everyone, welcome back to the channel. We're currently in Iceland as you might be able to tell with the scenery behind us. So we've been in Reykjavik now for a couple of days and we've just headed out this morning onto the famous Lagerberga trail. We were going to stay in Landmannalager which is where the bus has just dropped us off but the weather's so good we've decided to push on up to Hrafnuska, I think it's pronounced, where we can camp this evening and yeah so far so good. The weather's been a bit rough the last couple of days but it's beautiful today, lovely clear blue skies so we're just going to try and make some ground while we can. There's even steam coming out of the pack. So the first day on the trail is probably the hardest as you climb by around 500 meters throughout the day and your pack will be at its heaviest with all of your food for the journey. It's also arguably the most scenic part of the route as you hike through the Torfajökull caldera. Calderas are huge circular craters produced during the largest and most violent volcanic eruptions. Torfajökull is relatively small but packed full of energy. The evidence of this is all around in the form of the many geothermal hot springs visible from along the trail. As the trail ascends you encounter numerous snow fields, some larger than others and there's no need for any specialist footwear to cross them as normal hiking boots will suffice. As you head up towards Hrafnuska the environment changes. At this point you've left the day trip as far down in the valley and the conditions can deteriorate quickly. There are no dangerous wild animals in Iceland apart from the weather. The rough translation of Hrafnuska is Raven Obsidian Dome. Obsidian is a natural occurring volcanic glass and although it has a certain aesthetic quality I can tell you from experience it's not very good for hammering tent pegs into the ground. There are times when the conditions at the summit are too dangerous to camp because of high winds and hikers have to move on to the next hut at Alftavatn so it's always worth checking the weather at the hut down in Landmanalaga before attempting the route. At the summit there's a sad reminder of just how brutal the weather can get in the Icelandic highlands even in the middle of summer. A small plaque marks the spot of a who unfortunately succumbed to exposure in a blizzard in 2004. Only a few hundred meters on and he would have found the safety of the mountain hut that sits on Hrafnuska. Morning everyone this is the start of day two so today we're going to be heading down towards Alftavatn I think that's how you pronounce it and there's another hut there where you can camp. I think the distance is around 12 kilometers and it should take us between four and five hours and the uh the descent is around 500 meters so yeah there's also a river crossing as well that we're gonna have to negotiate but we have brought river shoes with us so we'll see how we get on with that but uh I've just got the first coffee of the day on the go and um it's really really foggy outside the visibility's down probably about 20 or 30 meters so uh I do have a GPS unit with me so we'll be able to navigate no matter how bad the weather gets so yeah I'm just glad that we came up here yesterday and we you know we shelved the idea of staying at land manalaga for for the night the the weather window just looked brilliant lovely blue skies so you know it's a good call to come up here it took us about I think about five hours all in all um again it's another 12 kilometer hike uh which is what about seven miles just under seven miles or something but um I mean we're carrying quite a bit of weight on us as well we've got like obviously we've got this four season tent we've got all the winter sleeping bags the winter sleeping mats five days worth of food with us as well and enough clothing to keep us warm so the packs are fairly weighty so the ascent that we done yesterday was 500 meters but according to the GPS it was near it 700 meters because you're just going up and down up and down so it was a bit challenging in some parts but with the good weather it was easy enough to to negotiate I wouldn't like to do it in heavy rain or anything like that like high winds but uh we got here so from now on it's all downhill pretty much which is uh which is a good thing so this is the first hut on the trail you can stay in the huts if you don't fancy sleeping in a tent but they get booked up months in advance as a camper you can only use certain facilities at the huts such as toilets and you can also pay for a shower where available and they all have drinking water you don't have access to the kitchens though so you need to bring along a cook kit with you and you have to camp at the huts as wild camping along the trail is forbidden so the weather's moved in but we're all packed up and ready to head off you ready Tris you all right Tris yeah easy isn't it yeah you can stay under there where it's dodgy can't you bit cavernous that like you've got to watch out for stuff like this it's kind of hollowed out underneath and there's a warning up the hood where it says just be careful and don't try and walk over any snow bridges there's another one over there as well but you know that one's really really to find there yeah i think we're approaching a glacier now i'm not really sure which one it is so i'll put on the screen if i can find out but it just it looks awesome just all that there so we've just come down into this gully here just to cross the stream and then we're going to head up over there but it's really good to get out the wind the wind chill oh it's freezing up there on the high ground and you're just surrounded by by uh snow-covered mountains and glaciers the wind is really cold and then this glacier here it's just it's amazing there's loads of snow tunnels underneath i haven't seen anything like it stinks this stuff sulfur straight from the hot springs oh it's awful i think this might be the river crossing that we're supposed to do i've heard that it can be knee high but at the moment i don't even think i'll bother changing into my water shoes might just be able to scoot across what do you think chas yeah i might just try and scoot across actually yeah got spare socks oh yeah this looks all right then we'll just scoot across there check that rock though make sure it's sturdy oh it's not is it typical so this sign says we've just come from hiraftanuska 6.7 kilometers and we've got 5.3 to go to half the baton which is in that direction so come on tris we'll crack on probably have to stop for some lunch soon like i'm uh but i've hung around for for a while but it's really exposed and cold up here and i wouldn't like to sit down for half an hour we start to get a bit of a chill so we've just had lunch which was uh just a plain plain ham sarnie wasn't it tris just meat and bread not even any butter or anything but uh it's all calories so we can see the lake or we could see the lake but it's uh it's disappeared now under a blanket of fog so we're just coming to the end of a pretty brutal downhill stretch we were looking for looking forward to the downhill for quite a while but then when you get on it you forget how tough it is on your legs but we've just got this view in front of us it's uh it's mind-blowing i don't think i can get a cross on the gopro just how unreal the view is we've got this mountain and then the lake behind it and just miles and miles of rolling green hills and and mountain tops it's crazy environment and then over here we've got the black lava rocks it seems to be bright green lichen everywhere and different kinds of mosses and there's the odd wildflower but not many but we've noticed that there's virtually no wildlife we haven't seen a bird for about three hours and uh no signs of any wildlife or anything it's just uh so inhospitable up here i'll just turn you the camera around and i'll just give you a look at the view in front of us so we are at the river crossing now we thought we might have crossed it earlier on or we hoped we did it was a tiny tiny little stream this one isn't much bigger but it looks pretty deep but um yeah we'll walk down we'll have a look if we can get across without having to take our shoes off then that'll be a bonus but it doesn't look too bad from here kind of winds down there we've got across down there this way might be easier trish just uh because that looks a bit deep there doesn't it saying that this looks a bit dodgy as well doesn't it if we can get here to that and then go across there i think his shoes on you think so yeah so i had a quick scout there on the river but we're just gonna have to put our water shoes on it's just a little bit too too deep i did have a look i got halfway out and then yeah and then i thought yeah it's gonna be freezing but it just saves your shoes getting wet doesn't it go on trish you first off you go good luck yeah see you on the other side ah ah freezing so that was plain sailing getting over the river probably could have just hopped over without having to take the shoes off but you just don't want to risk it if you end up with your your sock getting soaking wet or even worse your trouser leg i don't think stuff's gonna dry here that easily it's windy but it's also really wet and damp so there's a sign here which should give us directions to the hut alpha baton 3.2 kilometers her afternuska where we've come from 8.8 so it's in it's in this direction well folks we're here at alder baton as you can hear the the rain's coming down we kind of just got here quickly and pitched up uh we've bumped into a couple of english chaps on the way in who turned out to be from the city of york which is where we live so that was a bit of a coincidence and what we're doing now is just kind of trying to sort out what we're going to be eating so we've got a lot of dried males with us uh real termite i think we're going pretty bulky these packs when i was on the west highland we had kind of decanted it into little other plastic bags and then put it in a bowl and and used it that way but we've decided to bring all of these packets with us because we had to go through you know security in the airport so it's just i just figured it would be easier to keep everything in its packaging so yeah that's what we're gonna have tonight um i've got a couple of twinings peppermint teas as well for this evening's drinks we'll probably have a cup of soup for a starter and then we're living the life here aren't we tris oh look at this fresh side salad as well we were the first camp that's pitched up there's a few more a few more people turned up now i'm just walking up the hut to get rid of our rubbish from last night you can leave your rubbish at this hut but the one we stayed at last night there's no bins so you've got to carry everything out with you but uh some nice four by fours kicking around here arctic trucks hyluxes with and land cruisers with the big wheels on so the uh huts here are pretty cool actually you've got a few showers which we had earlier on plenty of uh sinks a few toilet blocks just behind me over the shoulder there you've got a long drop toilet for the campers another section down here with some sinks and running water there's a little restaurant and there's two two huts as well that you can sleep in if you don't fancy that you can come down here and stay in the campsite amazing views but it's uh pretty exposed down here i think the wind's gonna pick up a bit not too much hour morning everyone so this is the start of day three just got a coffee on the go after a day of rain non-stop yesterday and low-lying clouds we've woken up this morning to just clear blue sky and it looks amazing out there the scenery is unreal so today we've got about 10 miles to hike down to to what's it called estra botnar i think probably butchered that pronunciation and i think we've got across four rivers uh two rivers have a bridge and then you've got a way through the other two so should be an interesting day there's information up on the huts that gives you an indication of the distance and and how long it'll take you the right and this one will take you between six and seven hours but uh yeah it looks pretty good i've got the the trail downloaded on my gps unit so you can go in and check the elevation of the trail so the last two days was up and down uh it's been pretty heavy on the legs to be honest especially with the heavy packs but uh today it's pretty flat so it shouldn't be shouldn't be too hard hopefully especially if this weather holds up so yeah i'm gonna drink this coffee this is just nipped up to the bathroom um i'll make her a coffee and then we'll get the porridge on and start thinking about trying to dry the tent off a little bit and getting packed up so this morning's breakfast is a tent meals cashew and goji berry porridge so that's us now leaving alt vatten heading to the next hut you can see the hut in the background there so last night it was um really miserable and we're a little bit worried about the wind coming in but by about nine o'clock it had completely died off so it was a really still night and then we just woke up this morning such great weather we were able to pretty much completely dry the tent out clean it down a bit because there's a lot of like dust and grit in the landscape here and it gets in the tent and gets in your sleeping bag and your shoes and everything so yeah managed to sort the tent out a bit my bag doesn't feel any lighter does yours trace yours feels lighter now come we're gonna put everything in here yeah i think um you know we are carrying a four season tent which weighs best part of four kilograms to be honest with their footprint about 3.6 um but i think up here i mean this place is so exposed if the wind really picked up at least would be secure so we've been hiking now for about 10 or 15 minutes and we've come to the first major river crossing and this one looks it doesn't look too deep but it's certainly wider than the last one we done so it looks like we're going to be washing our feet again in the freezing cold icelandic water so the river crossing was dead easy uh the only problem with it is it's just freezing cold like really really cold but it was just calf deep is that the direction you're going so this hut here is Hvangil so if you don't want to camp at Alstabatn you can continue on for probably about an hour and uh you can pitch a tent here so we're on a pretty decent quality four by four track here Tristan and i wanted to come to iceland for years in the four by four you know and do a trip around the ring road and and all that kind of stuff but the sheer cost of it you know it's out with this world so this is a really good alternative isn't it so you're getting right off into the highlands of of iceland you know immersing yourself into the scenery and experiencing the weather and um yeah this trail is busy without a doubt we're getting towards the end of the season i think the hood shut in the first week or two of september and we're about i think it's about the 24th of august today so um yeah it's still busy i'm imagining peak season which is july it'll be rammed but uh doesn't really bother us you know you just you're just getting a face for the eyes we can see people congregating overhead so i think we're approaching the second river crossing so this is our lunch today it's drier than yesterday's sandwich i didn't think that would be possible but this is just cheddar cheese in uh some kind of what other i think there's some sort of flatbread like a flatbread that were bought in reykjavik no but uh nothing just bread and cheese does the job though doesn't it it's all we can see out here just these little flowers on this stretch nothing else no other vegetation so this is the really fine volcanic sand which can get whipped up in the wind so we're finally here in about another 100 meters we should be able to see the hut and uh yeah it looks fantastic actually i'll just turn the camera on and give you a look so we've just been out for a little mooch this evening not very far so we arrived at the hut earlier on set the tent up and we've just been relaxing we've had some food we uh bought a couple of cans of beer drank those that was pretty refreshing and we're just having a look around the area you just see how how green it is around here there's a lot of uh plant life compared to the past few days of of hiking it's uh it's a bit problems what's wrong just go down there yeah so we're just gonna head back to the tent now and set the uh the bedding gear up and then