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Iceland trip report

24K views 88 replies 51 participants last post by  ErikPlankton 
#1 ·
Together with two friends we did a four-day trek through the interior of Iceland, with packrafts and afterwards I stayed a week longer to co-guide a group of bikers in the volcanic ranges of south Iceland.

Our packraft trip started to the northwest of the Hofsjökull, the round gletsjer in the centre of Iceland. The idea was to bike around it starting out east and passing above the gletsjer along an old, seldom traveled track. Sometimes it was pretty clear, sometimes we had to go cross country, keeping the glacier on our right.



The terrain there would have been a nightmare on normal bikes, but with our Sandman fatbikes (two Gobi's and an Atacama) we made light work of it. Smiles from beginning to the end. The terrain was a mixture of volcanic rock, volcanic ash, snowfields and dozens of rivers to cross. Those rivers consisted the main difficulty of the first few days.



This was my setup: packraft, drysuit and misc rafting stuff up front, all spare parts and tools in the frame triangle, clothing and 1st aid on the rear rack, sleeping bag, mat, freezedried "food" and stove in a backpack. Snacks and camera in a feedbag on the handlebars.
I kept down the weight of my backpack so it was pretty light and the whole combination was a joy to ride, very "secure" and stable, comfortable and efficient. - the ideal expeditionbike over rough terrain. I kept the dropper seatpost and serious brakes because of the week of biking after this.
The only real concession for touring were On One Mary sweep bars and a rear rack. The frame "bag" was an old Ortlieb camera bag I had lying around and just strapped in the main triangle. It just left room for a water bottle and a tool bottle.

The rear rack was a simple clamp-on affair from Topeak, which I reinforced with two struts going down to the frame. That created a stiff triangle in which to stuff more gear, but I had already a place for everything I wanted to take...
When going through the taxfree in Reykjavik airport I noticed a stand with little 3-liter wine cartons. I rarely had such an "aha" moment :D: the bags inside those cartons are so incredibly tough we used to inflate them to stabilize loose rubble roofs in cave passages (in my days exploring caves). So I just taped a wine bag in there: if you rough it, you can at least do it in style :thumbsup:.
At each bivouac, we were able to savour a few cups of chilled red wine - never tasted so good !



With the late summer we had anticipated using the packrafts a lot, but most of the river crossings were just done on foot. Icy water, coming from straight under the glacier a few kms away.



But we didn't carry the rafts for nothing, this river was just too deep to cross on foot. But it was narrow enough to shutlle everything over using one raft and an end of rope we were carrying,



The vastness of the Icelandic highlands...



Iceland has both very cold and very warm water, soaking in one of the hotpools was a real treat after wading through countless icy rivers. The first two days of our trek we didn't see a soul, afterwards we hit a dirtroad that had some traffic, about a jeep every hour.



Like these guys from a "search & rescue" team, some 6)7 of these volunteer teams cross continuously the interior highlands in tourist season to see if they can help anyone, stuck or broken down. Nice guys with an impressive rig...



Ok ok, yours are fatter :mad: !



Then I went back to Reykjavik, to welcome a group of 9 bikers which whom I was going to bike right through the pretty active volcanic southern region. The first short day took us by on of Icelands taller waterfalls, lots of nice singletrack - the luggage went in a 4x4 but I kept some tools, spare parts and 1st aid on my bike because I was going "last man" the whole week. No backpack, that slowed me down a bit in the real technical stuff but the fat tires were very forgiving.



The next day took us north over the Hekla volcano and into the Landmannalaugar region. Starting out from there proved to be one of the toughest day so far: strong gale, icy rain, a pass to cross, a lot of pushing... pushing my bike, it often fishtailed almost 90°, just pushed sideways from the wind.
Here one of my biking buddies is studying a field of obsidian rock, volcanic glass, which we biked through for miles.





Pretty spectacular landscape, from a lunar landscape to lush green down below. An almost 100% singletrack day - tough. Tough, but nice !



Good fun each evening, the rotten weather proved the perfect bonding tool.



The next day was an "all downhill" day, the downhill part being somewhat open to interpretation... very nice day, almost all singletrack again.



Some pretty "interesting" stretches along the trails...



This day was to be "it", the big one. I've done quite some weird trails in my life and this one ranks right up there !



We went from 200 m altitude, all the way up to 1100m, with hardly a few meters of biking: all pushing, shoving, hauling and willing the bike up. But what a day... wow... We took a trail to the pass between the MyrdalsJökull and the Eyjafjallajökull glaciers and volcanos, the last one the culprit of disrupted air travel last year.



After struggling up the mountain for hours on end we finally arrived on top and biked through and over Iceland's newest lava field, between brand new volcano cones and still warm and smoking lava flows.



Here no rivers to cross but many snow and icefields, but our Sandman bikes made short work of those.



Once over the last pass, it went all the way down to sea level along a river which formed canyons and waterfalls along its course - very, very nice.



The last waterfall was pretty impressive, we could bike right up to it.



On our very last day we went back closer to Reykjavik to go biking in a valley with plenty of hotwater springs and pools.
But something was wrong... there was this weird phenomenon in the sky... some said it was a sun... ;). After 10 days of almost constant bad weather a welcome sight.





You have to imagine the sound of a small jet engine with the picture of this blowhole, together with a rotten-eggs sulphur stench :D.

 
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#30 ·
Ok, here goes - with the help of Wadester and Photobucket :)

We encountered these strange hexagonal patterns in the highlands, a local guy who I showed the picture told me they were caused by freezing/thawing. Anybody knows exactly how these patterns are formed ?

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A few of the countless river crossings, from afar some looked like lakes but coming closer they were just a maze of smaller and bigger channels.

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Biking the Icelandic highlands, here was a nice stretch (picture taken while biking). More often there were footballsized rocks all strewn about. But no problem for our fatbikes, apart from the deeper river crossings we never had to push our bikes on the "expedition" part of our journey. It would have been a nightmare with regular bikes, although appearing firm everything was kind of "soft" - even softer then wet sand on a beach. In regions where a lot of ash had recently fallen it was downright "soft sandy" where the gale winds had forgotten to blow it away.
Locals told us that on certain stretches we should pray for rain, because if it was dry and windy, ash/dust clouds could be as dense as a fog. So we prayed...but those old Icelandic viking gods have a weird sense of humouring us because we got far more rain then we asked for :mad:.

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I had 70mm (rear) and 80mm rims, my mates were on 47mm hoops. I liked the extra float on sand and over rocks the wider rims gave me, but they did did slow my bike down a bit in the steering dept. Or would it have been the dwindling wine supply that made steering more difficult :skep: ?

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The mayor difficulty of the more travelled dirtroads in the interior are the washboard sections. Fatbikes ar better then normal mtb's on such sections if the "waves" are small and close together. If they're pretty big and deep, like on the picture, it doesn't really matter...

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Here's why such things are called lava "flows", we traversed both. The second one is Iceland's most recent one, from last year and still smoking... The volcanic cone is also brand new, you could still feel the heath emanating from the cracks around it.

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Biking some of those snowfields was a hoot !

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I like this picture, that's the Eyjafjallajökull in the back, the volcano that paralysed European air traffic last year.

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One of the more "challeging" trails, near Thorsmork. The "wire" you see is a cable to haul you up. It doesn't show on the picture but that section was nearly vertical - I was taking a breather :).

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Same trail, one hour later and 1200 ft up...

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Fast forward an extra hour and an extra 1200 ft...

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Aahhh, but is was worth it, still warm & smoking lava...

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Hours of downhill singletrack next to a thundering mountain stream...

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With the grand finale at sea level, the Skógafoss !

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A few anecdotical pictures: not even an extremely trailworthy Sandman is capable of everything. I'm on the trail, my mate was on the trail but got "distracted" a bit and went head over heels :D. No bodily harm done.

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When in Rome, do as the Romans... a restaurant's menu. What would you like to taste :D ?

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#32 ·
I'm definitely going back to Iceland next summer. Probably for something similar: first an "expedition" part and then a "regular" co-guiding part with a group. Personally, I'd like to see the Westfjords and I think I can do something really nice there with fatbikes and packrafts. I've got a friend who now lives in Reykjavik but her father still operates a fishing trawler out of those fjords.

And the second part like this year, just "normal" singletrack biking between the volcanos in the south. With luggage transport in a jeep, it's hard enough already as it is !
 
#36 ·
One of the best threads I've read on here in a while. Thanks!

Question: Regarding the bikes and crossing rivers and having volcanic soils/ash to contend with: How did this affect the performance of your drive train, hubs, etc?

Anything that you can share about the "wear and tear" issues from subjecting the bikes and equipment that you carried would be interesting to the forum, I think.
 
#38 · (Edited)
One of the best threads I've read on here in a while. Thanks!

Question: Regarding the bikes and crossing rivers and having volcanic soils/ash to contend with: How did this affect the performance of your drive train, hubs, etc?

Anything that you can share about the "wear and tear" issues from subjecting the bikes and equipment that you carried would be interesting to the forum, I think.
Good questions, being the "tech" guy on the trip it was my task to carry tools, spare parts and keep things up & running. For the "expedition" part of the trip we had 3 Sandman fatbikes, two with SC32 forks and one with the prototype German A forks. That last bike had an "old" DTSwiss 165mm rear hub while all the others had Shimano XT hubs, modified by Sandman to 165mm. All were running Isis BB's.
On the second week the two SC32 bikes left and 3 newer Sandman bikes entered the frame. Two titanium models and one alu. A mixture of Sram and Shimano parts and "outboard" BB bearings - all with the German A forks . And during that same week 5 "normal" bikes including a Lapierre tandem (!).

Problems with the Sandman bikes: the air pressure went suddenly out of one of the old SC32's on the second day. We inflated it again and it held its pressure afterwards. Bizarre.
I installed a KS dropper seatpost on my own bike the day before I left for Iceland and after a week it suddelly started to sag. It developed all of a sudden a one inch "suspension": instead of locking, it went in about an inch under pressure, bouncing up again when unweighted - just like an unsprung fork. Not a very big problem, I just raised my seatpost a bit and I had the combination of a suspension AND a dropper seatpost :D. But that was not what it was supposed to do, being practically brand new... I haven't been able to send the post back yet so I don't know what went wrong internally.

And after two weeks of riding I think my Isis BB has passed its prime, it alreadyy had a year on it and now it turns a bit rough. But still no play, so I'll let it be for now

So far for the fatbikes, no puctures - even in the obsidian stuff where the others went around.

Of the "normal" bikes the tandem sheared off part of its freehub pawls, but could finish the days' ride (and the owners had a spare). It also broke about 10 spokes, but I suspect the wheelbuilder was the culprit... Apart from that, one Magura fork "froze", locked out. I'm not familiar with those forks so I called a dealer I knew who was and asked if it was an easy "field" repair. But he advised me not to open it for some "wilderness 1st aid".

Another fork (a recent Rock Shox) baffled me: on a descent I came across the owner who was complaining that his forks had frozen up "again". He then proceeded to de-gunk the area between the sliders and the stanchions, with me kidding him "like that was going to solve the problem". But lo and behold: after he cleaned it somewhat, the forks worked again ?!?

Apart from that the normal wear & tear: some wasted brake pads, a torn tire (not a fat one) and some clogged shifter cables which I "relubed" without taking them off.

For the drivetrain, I only lubed the chain and the derailleur pulleys, nothing else apart from a very good, throrough lubing and cleaning before departure (I basically took my bike apart before leaving). In Iceland I used Finish Line Ceramic Wet chain lube and only had to use that once a day - even on days including countless river crossings. It did attract grit at the outside, but apparently kept the inside lubed nonetheless because I didn't hear a croak or squeek during the whole of the trip.
I had never used it before (I had another lubricant with me but stuck with the Finish Line after testing it on the first day), but that lube was close to perfect for the conditions, but nevertheless on the wettest, ashiest day (+7 hours) my bike developed chainsuck. After two times I got my chain damaged and it finally broke on a steep hill. I put in a quicklink, relubed the chain and the problem was gone.

That said, the drivetrains and all moving parts sure got a beating... it's difficult to judge how much of % wear everything took but it was way more then normal use.

In Reykjavik there are several big bike shops, but once in the interior yoyo. And always remember that safety = prevention. Carrying a huge 1st aid kit for your bike and yourself isn't "safety", that's just for patching things up after something went wrong.

Safety is preventing by preparation and behaviour that you don't need that sort of kit. Safety isn't patching things up, patching things up is damage control :D.

As for gear packing, I packed my kit in Ortlied waterproof bags. But those aren't watertight when dunked, like when tripping while crossing a river or flipping & swimming with a packraft. So I had packed all my stuff (apart from the raft) in additional, lightweight drybags.
I wouldn't trust any of the bags individually (rolled up closures always leak when dunked...), but I know the two combined are a good match: the Ortlieb drybags for toughness and for keeping most of the wet stuff out. The flimsy interior drybags for keeping the important stuff really dry. Dirty laundry can be stuffed between the two :)
 
#37 ·
For ten of twelve years ago I made a biketrip on Iceland with my former girlfriend. I recognize many photo spots. But I also see some very interesting tracks! I can't wait to do such a trip with my Pugsley.

@ politiefietser Tommy: rondje texel stelt natuurlijk nu niks meer voor. Wellicht in de winter als er sneeuw ligt maar de omstandigheden zijn natuurlijk niet te vergelijken met die in IJsland. Wel wil ik kijken of ik in de winter naar Zweden kan gaan, maatje van mij heeft daar 2-de huis. Wellicht een mooie roadtrip om daar naar toe te gaan. Expeditie Zweden?

TBB
 
#40 ·
@caminoloco: Thanks for the detailed response!

I am somewhat surprised by the lack of bigger issues there given the terrain, but happy to understand it wasn't worse than it was. :)

We used to swear by Finish Line "Wet" chain lube for sodden courses or winter riding. I have not tried the "Ceramic Wet" version. I may look into that.

I found it interesting that your fat bikes could take on the obsidian while the skinnier tired bikes avoided it.

Thanks again for such a detailed response. Much appreciated!
 
#41 ·
I am somewhat surprised by the lack of bigger issues there given the terrain, but happy to understand it wasn't worse than it was. :)

I found it interesting that your fat bikes could take on the obsidian while the skinnier tired bikes avoided it.
The 3 "expedition" bikes were in good working order before departure, I made sure of that. And for the bikes on the following week, I had provided the owners with an ultra detailed bike checklist a few pages long :D.

Before that checklist, you wouldn't believe the rolling wrecks some people would start a (serious) biking holiday with...

As for the obsidian rock gardens: to be frank we recognized it too late for what it was and were already in the middle of it with our fatbikes before it dawned on us that we were actually biking through a field of glass rocks sharper then flint :rolleyes. We had avoided a soggy snow field and all of a sudden marveled at the weird rocks were were hobbling over. It's really a beautiful "mineral" (not really a mineral because it's basically glass).

But after we got through the first one ok, we just continued - the obsidian lasted for a few miles, patches off and on. The normal bikes avoided such rock gardens altogether, they were forced to walk or go around them.

In my experience fat tires don't shred as easily as skinny ones. I think (but don't know for sure) that's because a fat low pressure tire "molds" itself around sharp edges without slipping off - the slipping off is what causes a tire to shred.

One of my biking friends clearly has the Icelandic "blues" as well, here's a nice feelgood youtube movie about Iceland he just sent me :thumbsup: He added "makes you want to return straight away"...

Inspired by Iceland Video - YouTube

He's right, watch at your own risk ;) !
 
#45 ·
Aha, so that's the sort of terrain that Dick Cepek tires were designed for! I'd always wondered where they'd be suitable.

Whoa man, that looks like a once in a lifetime sort of bike adventure. I'd love to do a ride like that. Thanks for sharing!!! :thumbsup::cool::D
 
#47 ·
Yes, I rode a (grip-shifted) titanium Sandman Gobi with Gravity Dropper too, although mine was an XL and the one pictured here and shot by myself is an M-sized one, being pushed up the Eyjafjallajökull by Carl.

Sorry I cannot include pictures here myself yet : I tried but I need to have scored at least ten pure-text comments before having the right to include graphics.

It was a loan : I ordered a Sandman with a Pinnion gearbox in the crank, but it wasn't ready yet. I'm a Cannondale Prophet biker with a Rohloff axle gearbox, but Rohloff doesn't see a market for their product in a wide-frame version. I think they are dead wrong...

I succesfully biked the BCBR Epic 2010 on the Prophet, but with 115 Kg on my own 54 year old 6ft4" frame I shied away from taking 2.5" wide tires to these volcanic slopes - although normally-built bikers could and did. The Surly 3.8" tires on the Sandman kept me afloat on everything it was thrown : ash, sand, lava rocks, obsidian glass boulders, snow, ice, mud, gravel, grass...

And yess !!! we both have nice curves :rolleyes:

Bro Bart
 
#49 ·
I forgot to include tephra : a light-grey fluffy kind of volcanic ash that gets airborne in strong winds, unless wet.

To be fair : the slopes on this video are a bit exaggerated by the 172° angle of the action cam on my helmet. To balance things, footage on flat surfaces look not like action at all.

And as a workplace prevention expert, I foot everything that looks too dangerous, after figuring out a plan B and C.

I believe you could actually ski down those slopes on your shoes - I did this as a student in the Italian Dolomites, descending 500 altimeters in minutes, nearly completely wearing off my soles - though I'm not sure these volcanic ashes wouldn't cause a slide that would bury me.

Anyone out there who would know ?
 
#51 ·
Absolutely awesome!! :thumbsup:

I lived in Iceland for 2 years in the late '80s and have visited most of the places you highlighted. Of course at that time I was more into 4WD than anything. Had a 4x4 Blazer that we went road tripping in almost every weekend.

I LOVED Iceland. Was definitely one of the best overseas assignments I ever had!
 
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