They say that if you don’t like the weather in Iceland, wait for an hour and you’ll get another season. During the night 50 cms of snow had fallen on the Solheimajokull glacier.
Amazingly the main road had been cleared and our coach safely parked up a kilometre from the snout of the glacier. -11 degrees with a very cold wind coming down over the glacier from the north. Ian said it was a five layer clothing day. He was not kidding! That plus a hat, scarf and gloves. We put on the crampons and harness and got our ice axe. Since we were one of the first groups there, our leaders cut a fresh path through the snow.
As we stepped on to the ice the wind dropped and it felt as if the temperature rose. Within 5 minutes we only needed 3 layers! For the next 2 hours we explored the surface of the glacier. It was the most exciting experience ever! Exhausting yes, but if you have the chance to walk on a glacier, that regretfully is retreating, take it.
We were exhausted. Even our packed lunch tasted wonderful!
The great thing was we still had some other wonderful experiences exploring the south coast to come that afternoon.