Iceland day 3 ice cave

February 24, 2016

Day three was huge for photos so I'm breaking it into 2 chunks so that it's less crazy.

This trip both Jeff and I picked one adventure that was totally non compatable with a baby. I wanted to do a glacier hike that went to an ice cave. The cave had a frozen waterfall in it. Unfortunately there was an avalanche a few days ago that filled that cave with snow. No one was in it and the guides stopped using it a few days before the avalanche because they could see the snow accumulation near the entrance. Instead I was able to check out another icecave with less hiking, easier access and no waterfall. I was a little disappointed to loose the burley factor on my adventure, but it was amazingly beautiful.

We woke up to this terrible view of the ocean and glacier.

After breakfast, I met up with the guide for the cave trip while Jeff and Wren were going to hang at the hotel. On the drive out we saw a heard of reindeer along the side of the road. Durring another portion of the drive along the ocean we saw whales spouting. As we were watching them a couple surfaced enough to see them a bit. I saw one's tail quite well as it was going back down. We were told they were humpbacks. It was a cool bonus to my trip. Soon after the whale spotting, we left the road and headed twards the glacier.

Here is a picture of the drive out to the glacier.

The mountains and glacier.

This is the crazy vehicle it takes to get us out there and not get stuck in the snow. There is no road, just snow and a little bit of a path that was abandoned in places because the ruts or drifts got too deep. It took almost an hour of driving over crazy snow to get to the edge of the glacier.

So a little information about the cave. The guides find them at the end of summer by following rivers that flow out from underneith the glacier. In summer, the increased temperatures cause more melt and it has to go somewhere. Water goes down hill. The water finds fissures in the glacier and runs underneith the ice until it comes out at the end of the glacier. So the guides mark the location and check it in winter. If the cave is safe, they keep the entrance free of snow and take people to it. The walls and ceiling of the cave are ice and the floor is the ground up bits of rock and gravel that the glacier carved out of the mountains. Some parts of the cave were large and open while other areas i had to crawl on my knees and elbows with my camera and tripod. My knees are all bruised up from scurrying around.

Just one more thing, glacier ice is blue. The light in the cave was crazy! I used no filters or special settings to get the color in the pictures below. Nothing has been photoshopped or edited.