We arrived at the visitor center and found our tour operator, Glacier Guides, and their wonderful grass-roofed hut easily. Everyone got fitted with crampons and handed an ice axe, and we boarded the Bluebird yellow schoolbus that would take us to Falljokull. We noticed this glacier on our way in; it is very distinctive with its giant ice cliff towering over the moraine some thousand feet above. This is just one of dozens, possibly hundreds of glaciers in the park. They all are arms of the Vatnajokull ice cap.
Our guide, Svavar, mentioned that the ice at the base of the ice fall is more than 500meters thick – which puts it below sea level. The glacier is retreating very rapidly. Every glacier hike we’ve taken has the drill of daily maintenance of the routes as they change constantly necessitating new steps being cut, new paths created, hazards identified or cleared and so on. Svavar told us that in just the five weeks since his first tour this season the toe of the glacier has retreated at least six feet. The glacier is losing height as well – about two meters of thickness every year.
We climbed about half way up to the ice cliff, stopping every ten minutes or so to be introduced to a new glacial feature. We noticed that this glacier was pockmarked with little cones of soil and rock, and that the surface was sprinkled with small stones, many of them covered with thick moss. We wondered if a storm of rock fall had carried this over to the ice, but no, turns out these things were trapped in the ice and the melting has just know set them free. The little moss covered stones are nicknamed “glacier mice”. The moss is the only living thing on the glacier.
There were more fascinating/ gorgeous features than you could shake a trekking pole at, and we need to finish this post before the battery dies completely, so…summary:
Cauldrons – these large crater-like depressions in the ice were filled with sediments washed into crevices in the glacier as melt water raced to find the easiest out-flow.
Water channels – The ice we were so blithely tromping across turns out to be a veritable Swiss-cheese of these tunnels. I knew water was flowing under the glacier and that is how it moves forward – I did not realize that water is moving all over and all through the glacier also. Svavar showed us a few of these areas where surface melt was digging a canyon for itself into the glacier and then went under the surface forcing its way through every tiny crack or weakness. We saw some incredibly elaborately honey-combed water passages. These can burrow down immense depths – and we are stomping all over this much thinner than you thing surface in our pokey metal shoes. Zada couldn’t stop jabbing at every thin or weak looking area with her ice-axe; apparently determined to open a monster crevasse for us to all be swallowed by or something.
Svavar took us to one last hole in the ice – this one was extra-ordinarily straight and deep. He dropped a large rock and had us count off the seconds until we heard it hit bottom. It took a really long time. He reminded us that each second was approximately 9.8 meters of acceleration. Then reminding us to be careful he headed down off the ice slope.
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