20.08.08 Kverkfjoll – Reykjahlíð
by Garik and Lena

• Yesterday when we went to sleep it was rainy, so we prepared for a cold night. The night was extremely cold, I had to rub my feet all the time and found it hard to fall a sleep. Lena wanted to get up at 04:00AM, in order to go to the hut, to warm up. I tried to get “folded” as much as I could in the sleeping bag, tried to pass the time till more reasonable time to rise up. Me and Lena concluded to wake up around 06:30AM. At some point during the night, the rain had stopped and Lena thought, “goody!!!”, there will be some time for the things that hang outside the tent, to get dry till morning… After some time we started to hear weird noises and started to feel some wetness around us, though we were in our sleeping bags. We started to think, what can cause all this? The answer is snow! Yep, it was snow! I crawled outside the tent, just to see that our tent and all area around us is covered with snow. The entrance to the tent was blocked with a nice layer of snow, something like 5cm deep. At first, we were very excited, started to take pictures and play with snow, then we realized that we have to pack our stuff in snow conditions, it’s not going to be fun! Our fingertips called for help! Everything was wet and cold! Hands were freezing and it was difficult to hold anything. After an hour and a half, we managed to put everything in waterproof backpack’s bags and left them outside, making our way quickly to the hut. Read the rest of the entry »

• When we woke up in the morning, it was very cold. Last night, we asked our bus driver – guide, how cold is it here at night? He told us that last week it was below zero, but for tonight he expects not less than +2C. We ate bread with tomato flavored butter and tea for breakfast. We were supplied with pole sticks for today, so we could leave ours at the tent. The guide told us that those poles are low quality poles, and good for one use only. Actually, they were used much more than once and still looked much better and stronger than those we bought for Lena in Israel via eBay. Read the rest of the entry »