19 April, 2014

Easter weekend, in every country I've ever lived, is always a weekend for hiking and enjoying the outdoors. In Australia, it's a weekend to try and see how cold you can get, or go for a long hike if you don't have holidays. In Iceland, it's the first big weekend in spring/summer. It's actually too early to make good use of, but it's a start at least.

The weather forecast for the weekend was really quite dismal. Both before and after the long weekend had better weather, but, it wasn't rain, and damnit, it was time to get outside! I managed to pull a few people together, and we found something suitable obscure, yet still interesting and not too short nor too long, and not too high altitude to have terrible weather.

We planned a loop around Jósepsdalur and Vífelsfell, and some of the smaller peaks, but we took a few short cuts in the interests of fun and social hiking. The final route was from the carpark for Vífelsfell (Why do they keep closing the road! Private industries have too much arbitrary power over things that are not relevant!) over to Sauðadalahnúkur, down into Ólafsskarð, into Jósepsdalur, and then back out to the car.

We had "excellent" weather. Hard driving hail, wind from the left, wind from the right, dead calm and blue skies, and everything in between. But as the man said, no rain!