KRAPI DAYS
Dear readers,
Isafold Travel operates a 5 day Winter Self-Drive tour called Highland Challenge & Comfort, which entails staying at a comfortable Hotel at the edge of the southern highlands and making challenging day tours in the snow with the ISAKs from the hotel and then return to the jacuzzi, sauna, happy hour and a delicious dinner.
The first day of the tour is spent going over the safety details and the particularities of driving the modified ISAK Defenders, and the travelling to the hotel on the edge of the highlands. The following day is when the real adventure starts. Here is a brief account of the latest tour, from this February.
The tour started 10th February, and this was the third HC&C Tour of the winter; a tour with 5 ISAK Defenders. A majority of the participants had been on Winter tours with Isafold Travel before, so this felt a little bit like a family reunion. There had been a great snow accumulation in January, but two days prior to the departure it started pouring with rain. Thus the snow got soft and melted to sludge with water at the bottom.
In the Icelandic language we call this state of snow krapi, which incidentally has no etymologic relations to the English word crappy, although it is often produced by crappy weather. Despite big 38-inch tyres of our ISAKs, these were extremely difficult conditions to drive in. The snow carries very little weight, lest the melted snow manages to freeze again. Fortunately the temperature dropped again below 0 degrees Celsius from February 11th onwards. In fact, the frost went down to about -10°C, and gradually the conditions got better, or in the words of The Mamas and Papas it kept getting better every day.
The saying goes that a picture tells more than thousand words, and if this is true, you have here over forty thousand words to enjoy at a quick glance. But take your time, as some of these pictures taken by the group members are veritable pieces of art.
On Monday 11th February we went into the area North of the Volcano Mt Hekla, with the aim of getting onto the southern trail to a famous site of Landmannalaugar. This charming spot is teeming with thermal activity and boasts a world famous natural pool with water around 40 °C just waiting for a weary to dip into in the middle of nowhere! However, the Krapi made it impossible for us, and so we had to surrender that time around.
On Tuesday February 12th, the weather forecast was very good, i.e. for cold weather, so we decided to try Landmannalaugar again, but this time approaching it from the North. As it turned out, we got one of the most beautiful day in the mountains you can think of. We started off this morning at 9:30am, but even though Landmannalaugar is only 35 km away from the Hotel Highland, we only reached Landmannalaugar at 17:30pm!
This was after a lot of struggling in the krapi, and some working one of the tyres back onto the rim (we had taken the tyre pressure down to 4 Psi to get extra flotation, and a side impact on the frozen tracks caused the accident). After some wonderful natural bathing we returned, and as the conditions were gradually getting better as the frost increased, it took us only 3 and a half hours to get back to the hotel. 10 kilometers per hour not bad! But we had so much fun, we didnt even mind missing the happy hour that day.
On Wednesday February 13th we had a great day reaching the fishing lake area of Veidivotn, a little further up North. We encountered some pretty deep frozen pits of krapi and rivers on our way, and although in most cases ice carried us, or we could surround the krapi pits, there was no avoiding crossing the rivers. Nevertheless, it was surely all worth it, we thought as we walked up on one of the many snowy hills around there and took in the great view all around.
For the last day, February 14th,we went a bit down south, again close to Mt Hekla, thinking we might perhaps challenge this volcano a bit, since it is theoretically overdue for its next eruption. I had studied the seismographs for the area the day before, and everything there seemed to be quite calm, at least no large earthquakes. After yet another gorgeous day in the highlands, we finally returned to town for a grand finale dinner, and celebrated the fact we had made in back intact from yet another ISAK Defender Winter Tour.
Im looking forward to the next Highland Challenge and Comfort!
To be continued.
