Gregory's Server
In June of this year, i made a trip to Iceland. It's my yearly "BIG" trip to walk somewhere cool and spend a handful of nights in a tent. This summer I walked the Hornstrandir Nature reserve / Hornstrandir peninsula (same thing). It's the northernmost tip of Iceland, and just JUST BARELY ALMOST grazes the Arctic Circle (or Polar circle, if you prefer)
I'll cut this thread into several posts. There will be quite some time between the posts as I'll just be writing and posting them as i finish them. I'll write info into the Image Description of all images.
General Trip info: June 22 to June 28 werethe days walked. I began the trip with 32kg of gear and food. Plus the clothing already on me. The trip was roughly 85km according to my garmin GPS. I walked for 7 days.
To get to the starting boat, first had to fly to reykjavik, go from international airport to domestic airport, and then fly to isafjördur, with a plane landing most spectacular in a mountain valley with super strong winds, landing almost diagonally. Quite the experience. After landing, we walked out the airport, and a bird immediately shat on my hiking mate lmfao.
The start was from Isafjördur village, from where a boat was booked to south-western Hornstrandir (Hesteyri) in the morning. From there, the trip would go a clockwise circle, ending in the valley of Veidileysuffjördur, a week later. I'll cut the posts into days from here on, with one post per one hike-day
I'll cut this thread into several posts. There will be quite some time between the posts as I'll just be writing and posting them as i finish them. I'll write info into the Image Description of all images.
General Trip info: June 22 to June 28 werethe days walked. I began the trip with 32kg of gear and food. Plus the clothing already on me. The trip was roughly 85km according to my garmin GPS. I walked for 7 days.
To get to the starting boat, first had to fly to reykjavik, go from international airport to domestic airport, and then fly to isafjördur, with a plane landing most spectacular in a mountain valley with super strong winds, landing almost diagonally. Quite the experience. After landing, we walked out the airport, and a bird immediately shat on my hiking mate lmfao.
The start was from Isafjördur village, from where a boat was booked to south-western Hornstrandir (Hesteyri) in the morning. From there, the trip would go a clockwise circle, ending in the valley of Veidileysuffjördur, a week later. I'll cut the posts into days from here on, with one post per one hike-day
Boat dropped us off on the Peninsula, on the landing site of Heysteri, there was a nice little house with a pancake cafe in it. We did not visit it, but the other couples and "The Frenchman" visited it. The other people were there for a day hike, and The Frenchman was there for the same hike as us.
Started off nice, mushy swampland, to hillside, to hilltop. Eventually, the end of the hilltop presented the first minor challenge: The path was marked as "Unmarked trail" on the map, and truly it was, unmarked. The path suddenly ends with a 45 degree incline going downhill, a mixture of mud, gravel, and minor water streams. As it was wet and raining, this was a slippery slope downhill. Standing on top of the hill, I realized something:
"This is literally the first main level of Death Stranding"
this was a reccurring theme throughout this entire trip, me going "what the fuck this is LITERALLY DEATH STRANDING LEVEL"
honestly im fucking amazed that kojimbo created an entire peninsula just as a throwback to the game.
Got down the hill, past a church, ignored the church, and then after we were about 100m past the church, a man and a woman came out of the church. They got on an ATV with a trailer attachment, and drove towards us. They stop next to us:
"Where are you going?"
"Campsite, north"
"Ah, we can take your bags and bring them there, its a lot easier to walk then"
"no thanks, we are doing the big hike and we want to cheat as little as possible"
"Ah, i understand"
And the old man on the ATV smiled very warmly, and, for some reason, cried?
It was quite unexpected. I think we might have slightly offended them by NOT entering the church to have a free coffee, as they mentioned that we shouldve done that! sorry ;_; , i didnt think that to be a feature.
We walked to the campsite, and shortly after, The Frenchman arrived, i think about 2 hours later? We chatted, we discussed, i came to the conclusion that The Frenchman had REALLY COME VERY UNPREPARED for what i assumed would be a VERY difficult hike. He said, there's a former BRITISH military base on top of that hill (points at hill) and then he really wanted to see it, so the clock was only about 16:00 or so, so he decided to quickly do a less than 5km trip up and down the mountain. He left all his gear at the campsite, and went up. Unfortunately for him, his phone GPS was shit, and he had no compass, and the moment he got on the hill, the thickest cloud parked itself cozy on it. In the meanwhile, i cooked, i shat, i washed, i pissed in the ocean, and then got some sleep. I woke up at 23:00 roughly, to some sound. It was The Frenchman coming back.
"Did you just come back"
"Yeah"
"Took long, thought youd be back sooner"
"Yeah i got lost in ze clouds"
"Did you atleast find the base?"
"Yeah, but it waz not ze worth it at all, thought i'd never get out of there"
Man was walking in circles in a completely flat top mountain in 10m visibility fog for like 3 hours lmfao.
Saebol campsite, i believe it was called. Good day overall, lotsa rain, easy terrain. Anyone could do this day. The campsite had running water, which was a hose running to a mountain stream running into a faucet.
Boat dropped us off on the Peninsula, on the landing site of Heysteri, there was a nice little house with a pancake cafe in it. We did not visit it, but the other couples and "The Frenchman" visited it. The other people were there for a day hike, and The Frenchman was there for the same hike as us.