Climb to Fagardalsfjall
Meg in her “happy place” photographing an eruption.
We began Wednesday by checking for an update on www.safetravel.is The site was closed down for the day because they were making improvements to the trail up to the eruption area. The day was dreary with gray skies and intermittent cold rain. We drove past the parking area and there were few cars in the lot, but we saw an ATV coming down off the trail. He was behind us on the road toward Grindavik. Roger pulled over, let him pass, and followed him in the hopes that we might ask him about trail conditions etc. Roger followed closely behind as he pulled out around slow moving farm vehicles and equipment trucks, turned down a couple of side streets in Grindavik and pulled into the parking lot of a one-story cement building. As Roger approached him, he pulled off his helmut and Roger could see that he had been tailgating a policeman and followed him to the station! He was quite pleasant despite that, and told us that the trails might be re-opened later that evening if the work was finished early enough.
The trail opened up at 7:00 p.m. and so did the skies, clearing a blue patch over the mountain. We finished dinner, packed our headlamps, rain jackets, water bottles, tripod, camera, etc. and headed to Grindvik. The line of cars started in town and wound its way towards the mountain. Our conversation went like this:
R: “There wasn’t anyone here this morning, why are there so many cars tonight?” Roger likes to hike in remote wilderness with few other hikers. Crowds spoil the experience for him.
M: “Think of it as a pilgrimage. There are other volcano pilgrims on the trail to this sacred site.”
R: “Maybe.”
M: “Or think of it like the Rolling Stones concert we went to with my brother in 2019. That was fun, right? An experience!”
R: “Not what I had in mind for my first volcano experience, but I’ll give it a shot. It’s a happening.”
Immediately after parking the car, we began a conversation with an Icelandic couple, Stefan and Etan, who had hiked the trail several times in the past couple of months since the eruption started. In the beginning, it was pure chaos. Cars lining the roads in both directions, parking everywhere there was a flat surface. More than 80,000 Icelanders have come to see the eruption in March, April and early May, many of them several times. That’s over 100,000 visitors to a remote, usually untrafficked area.
Stefan told us that this is a volcano of surprises. For weeks prior to the eruption, the scientists were carefully tracking seismic data that indicated the movement of magma underground. They identified this area as the site where an eruption was likely to take place. Then the seismic activity stopped. As the chief scientist was on the news saying that there is no longer a probability of an eruption, on a different channel there was footage of lava shooting into the air. Surprise! The scientists have stopped predicting.
In the early phases the lava production was very low. The Icelandic word for this eruption was most closely translated as “pathetic” according to Stefan. However recently the lava production has tripled and the explosive vent and massive flows are anything but pathetic. Another surprise! They are now calling it the volcano of surprises.
At first they tried to close the road in both directions to keep people out because the volcano was unpredictable (as most are). People were walking in, riding bikes, coming from six miles away in Grindavik, hiking every possible route up to the eruption area. Someone quickly figured out there was no way to stop them, so they might as well make it as safe an experience as possible. They keep making improvements to the trail, although it is still steep and slippery in places.
Fagradalsfjall eruption from a mossy vantage point about 1,500-2,000 feet away. The burning in the foreground is from the lava flow igniting moss fires.
I found the one-hour hike up a bit difficult, especially the sections of scree which is loose gravelly volcanic material that acts a bit like ball bearings under your feet. Whole families were climbing alongside us. Hundreds of volcano pilgrims make their way nightly up the slope to see the earth in fiery action. Roger had never seen an eruption before and he was eager to get to the ridge. He was enjoying the conversations with others along the walk up the trail, learning the history of this mountain, and a lot about how intrepid Icelanders are. One person told us that nearly everyone in Iceland has a picture of the eruption on their Facebook page. Dominos pizza ran a promotional discount for anyone who does NOT have a picture of the eruption on Facebook. There were no takers.
We stopped at the first ridge where there was a clear view across the valley to the eruption cone.
Over the 50 years that I’ve traveled to see volcanoes, I’ve introduced friends and others to this experience of seeing the earth in creation. They are always hooked. There is no way to describe it. “Awesome” is cliché. “Numinous” more closely approaches the feeling of being overcome with a power beyond comprehension - the power of the earth. We walk on it everyday and don’t think about. Consider it inert. Not alive. And then you see the earth come to life with a power beyond your imagination, pulsating from miles beneath your feet, with heat that reaches 2,000 degree fahrenheit liquid rock flies into the air - in this eruption reaching heights of 1,500 feet or more. And then lava pours down the sides of the cone and runs off into blood red rivers and streams. I am humbled before the earth. There is no way to capture it in words or pictures - believe me I’ve tried, and I continue to try. It fuels my writing, my poetry, my imagery. It comes to me in my dreams. I have been obsessed since I was about 10 or 12 years old and at 70 years old, I’m still obsessed enough to make the climb at 7:00 in the evening and stay until after sunset (10:30 pm) to climb down in the dark. Rain and sleet began to fall for the last half hour of our climb down, after we’d passed the steepest part of the slope. The volcano goddess favored us last night.
