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Category: Iceland

26.08.08 –Emstrur – Þórsmörk [day 4]
By Garik and Lena

We woke up as usual at 06:00AM when the two French girls and the military guy walked away. We spent another hour in bed before we actually got up. After breakfast we went to see the canyon near the hut. The weather this morning was excellent, light rain and wind, but mostly sunny! On our way we saw couple of times beautiful rainbows. On our way back to the hut, the weather turned to be unpleasant, windy with horizontal rain. We came back all wet, and the day hasn’t even began! The Spanish group already left, but the Germans- father and son- they took off a bit after we did.

Before we started our walk, Lena read on a trek sign that we have very steep descent and we will pass a bridge that is not recommended for those who have vertigo. Then it’s recommended to stop at two rivers crossing point, just before the hut.

So we walked; Germans sometimes pass us, and then they would stop and let us pass them… All the time we could see the Spanish group, somewhere at the horizon. So reached the steep descent. Nothing frightening actually! We’ve seen worse… The bridge was cool too… but in order to reach the bridge, we had to use ropes tightened to rocks, sliding all the way down on our bottoms. After the bridge, most of the walk was straight. Every time there was sun and rain, we looked for a rainbow. We managed to take some cool photos with a rainbow. At some point the weather turned to what it’s been the last three days. Today we stopped more than ever during the trek, nothing we could do, we were just tired… The Germans though were quite strong, the 60 years old father jumped from rock to rock to take a picture!

Today we ate many blue and black berries! At some point we started to ascend a bit and passed some bridge over some river. We though we were getting close to the hut but… a rivers crossing point… and rivers crossing… It wasn’t just a usual river crossing, it was very wide! At some points dry, at some points raging. We saw the Spanish group walking with water over their knees… They were easily drifted… Scary! We tried to find a solution, how to overcome the situation, German young fellow tried with us. While we looked for an alternative, the German father got on his way and almost falls in to the river! By the way, this is the same one that snored all night long, his snoring was so loud, and I don’t think I can imitate them consciously! We were right after him, me first, Lena second. She had a difficult time passing the river, so did I! Not like in previous times, we couldn’t stop now and dry our feet, there was a long way to the other side and still lots of areas with water crossing our way. The German guy decided to reveal his secret of how to cross a river – you must have three points of support all times. Really? Didn’t know that… Lack of coordination can not be overcome by physics, this is my secret! Never mind, the scariest is behind us! The map shows that the hut is 3 Km away.

So when we finished the river thing and kept walking with our wet feet, we realized that we are in some sort of forest. Real Icelandic forest, with quite tall trees! Then ascending, ascending and ascending… till we saw a sign pointing to two huts, the one we booked for tonight and the other we have to go to tomorrow morning in order to catch the bus! LP book indicated that there is a 3Km between the two huts, so we thought the hut should appear in front of us real soon… Instead of it, we had another serious ascending, and when we reached the highest point, we saw a hut in the valley, somewhere down there… I thought to myself “We’ll have to go this way back to the second hut tomorrow…?” Wow! After 45 minutes we reached the hut, we saw a sign pointing to Landmannalaugar 50Km and we smiled! We entered the hut all wet. The Germans just took their wet clothes when we got in. First thing I asked warden was about the way back to the second hut, so he calmed me saying that there is a 30 minutes easy shortcut!

We got a private room, for just the two of us with a big bed, without snoring and screaming people! We cleaned ourselves, made dinner, and sat in the dining room with the Germans. We’ve spoke with them a little, it turned out that the old one lived in Iceland once, and it’s his fourth visit here and only the first time he did this trek. He said he never had someone to walk the trek with… So we sat there, laughing around, playing Jenga. Me and Lena succeeded to build 31 floors! We browsed local books for nice pictures of the place. The German young fellow got himself two beers, 300 ISK for both ½ ltr green Tuborg. When it got late, we went to our room, but just before that we tried to take a picture of the glacier outside the hut as long as sky were clear. The last thing we did was to leave a small comment in the guest book!