TR: Hengill in Iceland (photo heavy)

A snowHead

Normally I'd put this sort of trip report in my thread in the snow reports section but the weather and photos turned out too good not to share with a wider audience. I'll stick the more boring details in the other thread though.

One of the great things about ski-touring is the ability to just go off into the unknown, explore and try to find an aesthetic line to ski. Last Saturday was super successful on all counts and a great day out. My friend Rory and I hit Hengill, an active volcano just a thirty minute drive to the South-West of Reykjavik. The peak itself is only 800m high but there are plenty of steep slopes and gullies to explore. The entire area has a whole load of geothermal activity and we parked up near one of the geothermal-power stations Hellisheiði at around 250m ASL. The tour from the car to the summit and back via some good skiing took us over 15km of ground with a vertical rise of 600m.

Geothermal activity is in abundance all over Hengill, here you can see a large swathe of snow melted and the ground literally steaming.

The south-west of Iceland actually experienced a crazy thaw whilst I was away in Japan. There were a couple of flurries of storms after I got back but somehow it all melted out again. Last week though we got a decent top up and were skiing 15-20cm of powder on Thursday evening. Our trek up Hengill began with some doubt as to whether there would be any decent skiing at all but it's hardly the point of ski-touring! The weather was glorious as we left the car at 8am with the sun beginning to rise, the temperature at -9C and a pretty stiff wind to spice things up. The initial ascent was done on foot and took us up 200m to a plateau where we put our skis on and began skinning. Cover was a bit marginal at times but we kept our skis on through the tour until we came back.

Rory skins out across the plateau into the sunrise. (click through for a bigger image)

It's all gone a bit Narnia, incongruous sign-posts dot the landscape as this is a very popular area of walking during the summer.

Skinning conditions were sometimes a little variable. Frozen moss is as good as snow though.

The journey to the summit took us four and a half hours with a lot of time lost negotiating the steep banks of streams running down the mountain side in really marginal conditions when there was a much easier route just out of sight around a corner! The views on the way were awesome though, not only as the landscape changes and becomes more alpine as you move higher but with the clear sky we could see out to the ocean and as far as to Snæfellsjökull.

Water is always flowing here thanks to the heat in the ground so there are lots of small streams meandering through.

Looking back to where we started. The plume of steam is from the power station.

You can just make out the sea on the horizon.

Probably from the day before a small point release goes to ground as it collects mass. The chunks towards the bottom are actually reasonably big. A good reason to be out early on a sunny day.

Spindrift in the sun. The wind doing an excellent job of shifting snow around, more data points about what hazard is building up where.

As we near the summit the terrain is decidedly more alpine.

Quite a lot more alpine in fact!

Epic thaw? What epic thaw!? It was all powder and sun up here!

Skinning across potentially dangerous slopes one at a time.

The summit celebrations and photos were pretty short as it was very cold and the windchill was immense. We quickly found a sheltered spot in the sun to sit and eat lunch.

Looking North-West over Þingvallavatn. (click for bigger)

Looking East towards the Bláfjöll range and Reykjavik in the snow free section on the right of the image. (click for bigger)

I stand looking back at our work. All that effort pays off handsomely with a great ski descent in excellent snow.

Thanks for looking! Smile

A snowHead

Magic, meh. Little Angel

That's where our sunshine went then. Laughing

How far away is the city in the picture above ?

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

About 22km to the nearest bit. That smudge of green contains pretty much the entire population of Iceland.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Nice!

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Beautiful weather! Bit different from all the other Icelandic skiing photies I've seen.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Top of the notch

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Superb pics Very Happy

After all it is free

A little more skintrack:

And summit:

Hi.

You seem to have mixed your directions up a bit, Hengill is to the east of Reykjavik, Þingvallavatn is to the north-east of Hengill and the view towards the capital and Bláfjöll is to the south-west.
The Reykjavik area is home to 200 000 out of a population of little over 320 000 so it is not quite the entire population in that picture. Smile

Nice pics by the way!

Sigvaldi

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

Doh, yeah got west and east completely backwards. Sad

In other factual errors we don't actually go to the named summit but Vörðu-Skeggi.

Do you know if many people bother skiing on Hengill?

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Excellent pics! I love these posts.

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Thanks.

Help!!

TR: Hengill in Iceland (photo heavy)

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