The Final Mile
THE ICE HAVE IT
Raw, primordial, extreme, challenging — in a word, Iceland. If I had to choose one experience, one overarching feature chiseled into my memory from “circum-cycling” this remote island, it could only be the elements. In retrospect, it is obvious why this came to be: the pages of our guidebooks were riddled with indications and outright warnings of what was to come. “… wind-blown sand can do considerable damage to the bodywork of cars. Attempting to cycle across the sandur can be sheer misery.” “For a cyclist, the sandur becomes a nightmare when the wind blows. Cyclists tell tales of being blown off the road and into sand drifts with no shelter from the stinging clouds,” warned Lonely Planet. The description should have sent trepidation ricocheting down my spine — instead, it piqued my interest. Iceland. Iceland! I imagined steaming thermal springs, rivers of molten lava, foreboding glaciers, and torrents of white water. And I would not be disappointed. Three days into our pedaling journey, we arrived at the escarpment bordering the realm of endless black sand called Skeiðarársandur, or simply the sandur. Until now Rob, Helen, and I had encountered mostly rain. Our tires had churned over fine black soot. Fog had been our steadfast companion. The night before, we’d arrived soaked and a little sullen at Skogafoss campsite. No hot shower awaited us as it was early in the season and the facilities remained locked. Futilely, we’d hung our clothes to dry, cooked
some pasta, and crawled into our tent. A strong wind dissipated the cloud cover that night, and in the morning a diffuse light enveloped the tent. It took me a moment to realize it was sunshine. As I emerged from our snug cocoon to find blue sky overhead, the low thundering of Skógafoss waterfall dropping 60 meters into its waiting pool filled me with contentedness. Then I saw that some of our clothes had been carried by the wind into a nearby field and now flailed like bird carcasses on a barbed wire fence. We
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scampered about and collected them, huddled behind the shelter for breakfast, and packed the tent. Then, propelled like surfers upon the crest of Mýrdalsjökull’s katabatic glacial wind, we headed east. Several hours of riding amid green and rolling countryside brought us to the town of Vik, and minutes later the escarpment loomed. Beyond was the sandur. This vast and strangely beautiful desert of black sand and soot was deposited by glacial bursts (floods caused by subglacial volcano eruptions) over thousands of years. It covers an area some 1,300 square kilometers between the Vatnajökull icecap and the Atlantic, and is the largest such phenomenon in the world. In 1996 a glacial burst beneath the icecap deposited 12.8 million cubic meters of sediment throughout the sandur, raising some areas by over 10 meters. The burst utterly destroyed the area of the Ring Road we now approached and left nothing in its wake but the twisted remains of metal bridges. Here our view of the escarpment could only be described using clichés or references to obscure worlds of fantasy; it was without a doubt one of Mother Nature’s masterpieces. We stopped for lunch beneath its towering cliffs. The blazing eye of the midday sun beat down on us, superheating the porous, black volcanic rock. For the first time since arriving, I was actually too hot. I took a moment to enjoy the sensation. Then the insects struck. They smelled our blood and our breath and within moments rose up from their half-hidden pools of tepid water to strike out at our unarmored skin, driving us with a ravenous vengeance from our resting place.
GREG SIPLE
Riding through primordial Iceland by Trevor Clark
Our flight quickly turned into exaltation as we were once again ushered by the wind and borne deeper into this desert. Lenticular (flying saucer–shaped) clouds, laying double and triple like stacks of fluffy white pancakes, hung suspended in the blue sky overhead. Spears of purple-flowered nootka-lupine, an alien species introduced to Iceland to help with soil fertilization, flashed past as we sped toward the growing Vatnajökull icecap. Several days later, as we neared the village of Höfn, dark clouds threatened. We stopped for a rest and were approached by a volcanologist traveling to Reykjavik. Like a volcano himself, he belched forth dire warnings that the Eastfjords would bring only hardship; the weather would turn on us and vehicles would purposely drive us off the road. He eventually departed, and, undeterred, we continued east. The following day, beneath clear blue skies, we descended into the Eastfjords, a series of skeletal spines of rock interlaced with the sapphire waters of the sea. This vast treeless landscape, so reminiscent of standing high above the Rocky Mountain treeline, warped my sense of perspective. With absolutely no vegetation on which to fixate, I found it difficult to judge time and distance. Minutes passed into hours and hours were compressed into minutes. It is said that at one time 25 percent of Iceland was covered with forests, but over a thousand years of human habitation, these were plundered — used for ships and settlement building, and for wood burning during the long, dark winters. Now, with nothing of the old forests left, an enlightened population and the State Forestry Service have begun planting hardy seeds in areas where they hope vegetation stands a chance to gain a foothold. The wind battered us. Our pannierladen bicycles acted alternately as sails, catapulting us along at speed, and as parachutes, dragging us to a near-
complete standstill. Helen hugged close behind Rob, using him as she would use a knife to cut through butter. I held back to do battle in my own way with the elemental Icelandic weather. Heading inland through the fjords, we fought winds dropping off the glaciated interior and accelerating out to sea. But we quickly learned this did not mean wind-assisted salvation in the other direction, for, funneling in from the sea, down the north side of each fjord, an equally strong blast of unforgiving air hammered into us. At the apogee of each fjord, the two winds swirled into a chaotic melee of flying dust and intermittent fine sea spray. Any trees would have long ago been either flattened or forced to grow small, like a bonsai. Fearing that any sudden letup or change in wind direction might send me careening off the road, down the bank, and into the frigid ocean, I clung to my handlebars with desperation. Ahead of me I watched Helen and Rob, each using the wind like some kind of glorified air cushion and leaning sideways at a gravity-defying 45-degree angle. Iceland is the embodiment of Mother Nature, and nothing defines cycle touring there more than the elemental extremes of the island’s weather. At times, it was the bane of our existence and we struggled. Man, did we struggle! At others it was an invigorating adrenaline rush that we didn’t want to end. In the end, looking back on all those miles of gravel and tarmac road, I can think of few challenges as rewarding as cycling in Iceland. After living in Bath, England for five years, Trevor Clark relocated to Vancouver, Canada. When not dreaming of travelling, he spends his time working at Mountain Equipment Co-op and trying to get the occasional freelance piece published. For his next adventure, he hopes to cycle tour the Argentine/Chilean Lake District.
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