ODYSSEY OF ICE AND WATER

In the far North, the land of fire and ice is a landscape of juxtaposition, from the violent Atlantic storms which shape its coastlines to the lava which spews from its core. Combining free diving, ice climbing and paddleboarding, three explorers embark on an Icelandic adventure to chart the ever-more delicate line between solid and liquid in our warming world.

As the setting sun sparkles across the fine black basalt sand, Tim Emmett, Luca Sommaruga Malaguti and Jimmy Martinello inflate their paddleboards in a tiny oceanside village at the southern tip of Iceland.

Beneath a fiery orange sky, they paddle out towards the towers of Reynisdrangar, a set of three freestanding sea stacks like gothic columns. An eerie calm sets across the still, dark waters. It could have been a scene from Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

A few days later, a death in those same waters is reported in the local news. A body dragged out into the icy ocean by a massive wave. The placid ocean that evening had been an anomaly; big waves and violent currents are the norm underneath cliffs at Vík í Mýrdal.

‘It really highlighted to us the wild swings in the weather and these powerful Icelandic storms,’ Emmet recalls somberly. ‘It gives you an appreciation of the power of nature: raging storms, freezing cold water, climate change — it’s all part of the world we have.’

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Though sobering, that power, and that ability of water, in all its forms, to destroy and be so achingly beautiful all at once, was one of the inspirations behind the entire trip.

Luca Sommaruga Malaguti, has felt a connection to water since he was a child. Born in Italy, his family would visit Croatia and Greece, and it was in the turquoise waters of the Adriatic and the Ionian Seas that he became a diver.

But in 2010, he had a life-changing moment while surfing in Costa Rica. After an unfortunate fall, he was held under for a seemingly interminable stretch of time. ‘The guy who pulled me out said I was lucky to be alive,’ Malaguti remembers. ‘Only a month before someone had died there. That really tweaked me a lot. I had a lot of fear and hit a patch of depression, but I reconnected with my love of the ocean through free-diving.’

Since then he has made it his life. In 2019, he quit his day job as an engineer to become a professional free diver, and has since dived all over the world — from Southeast Asia to the Middle East to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. Malaguti is the Canadian record-holder for the deepest bi-fin dive on a single breath, which he set at 275 feet in November 2021.

Tim Emmett is better known for his exploits on frozen water. From the UK, the 48-year-old is one of the most accomplished all-around climbers of his generation, whether it be rock, big mountains, or frozen vertical ice. On Canada’s Helmcken Falls, an overhanging amphitheatre of dangling ice daggers, he put up the most difficult ice ascents in the world.

Emmett has also been freediving for about 10 years, and it was in this way that he met Malaguti.

‘I kind of became his mentor for free diving and he kind of became my mentor for ice climbing,’ Malaguti said. ‘And we started working on a few projects together.’

As it turns out, mountain climbing, ice climbing, and freediving have more in common than meets the ice. Success at high altitude, requires one to train the body to be able to endure hypoxia, a condition of decreased oxygen in the blood supply. ‘Whether you’re 8,000m high, or two-hundred feet under the water in one breath, the same concepts apply,’ Malaguti explains.

The main similarity according to Emmett, however, is dealing with challenging and heady conditions and situations. ‘If you’re pumping out on an ice climb and you think you’re about to die, or if you’re at a record depth freediving, you have to stay relaxed and calm. You have to keep your shit together when it gets spicy. That’s the synergistic thread between the activities.’

One of the projects they had brewing was an idea that had long been the obsession of Malaguti: the opportunity to combine both of their primary passions into one trip, perhaps even capture it all in one unforgettable frame. It was Emmett who suggested Iceland as the perfect destination to realise the vision.

L-R: The braiding glacial rivers of Iceland; Freediver Luca Malaguti explores the crystal clear water of Silfra. A deep fissure formed by the separation of the North American and Eurasian Tectonic plates, Silfra has some of the clearest water in the world; Through the coastal mist, under the towering snowy peaks, Jimmy Martinello rolls into a memorable sunrise wave near the fishing village of Höfn, Iceland; Jake Humphrey paddles among giant Icelandic icebergs, mentally preparing himself to dive beneath them; Emmett paddling above the surface, and Luca swimming below, in Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland; Tim and Luca paddle out to the freestanding sea stacks of Reynisdrangar, on Iceland’s south coast.

The outstanding question was how to make it all feasible. That’s when the idea of inflatable paddleboards sprung to mind. SUPs would be the connective tissue between the world below the water and the one above it, allowing them to reach icebergs offshore. The SUP inspiration was also part of what led them to invite Jimmy Martinello onto the team. In addition to being an ace photographer, close friend and collaborator of Emmett’s, Martinello is also an experienced wave rider. And so was born this veritable quadfecta, multisport expedition.

On touch-down in Reykjavik, their first stop would be Silfra, a geological wonder and legendary freediving spot. It is a deep jagged-sided fissure within Þingvallavatn Lake, formed by the slow, glacial-paced separation of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. The spring water within Silfra is some of the clearest in the world. Despite having spent a full day in the sky, making the journey from Calgary and not yet adjusted to the jet lag, just a couple of hours after arriving in Iceland, the team were stepping into the icy waters. ‘The best way to wake up has to be to immerse your face in 0.5 degree water,’ says Emmett.

Despite the 7mm of rubber in their wetsuits, getting in was difficult. Factoring in wind chill it was about -10 degrees Celsius. Going down a set of metal steps, as the icecold water slowly permeated his wetsuit, Emmett questioned his sanity.

‘It’s not like getting in the sea. It’s way colder. I was like, Oh my god, this is flipping freezing, what are we doing? But as soon as my eyes went under, I was mesmerised. The visibility is so amazing — it’s difficult to describe.’ Emmett estimates he could see 100 metres in the water. Looking at his wetsuitclad friends and silvery fish swimming by him, he said, felt like being ‘in a high-definition film or video game.’

They spent a couple of hours exploring the deep recesses of Silfra. Clambering back up the metal steps, they compared notes – as best they could, that is. ‘None of us could really speak,’ remembers Tim. ‘The only skin exposed to the water is just a little section around your mouth that is totally bare; our mouths had gone entirely numb. Brian had a layer of ice covering his face.’

Next they drove southeast to the southern tip of the island, where they’d paddle to the towers of Reynisdrangar that unusually quiet evening, before continuing northeast around the Ring Road to the town of Höfn. Höfn is situated on the eastern edge of Vatnajökull National Park, within which lies the Vatnajökull Glacier, the largest glacier by volume of ice in all of Europe.

Here, Emmett, Malaguti, and Martinello climbed inside cavernous ice caves. This was terrain Emmett had already covered on a trip back in 2013. This time, he swung his axes up a perfect arch of glittering 100-year-old ice. But there were differences in the glacier since Emmett had climbed it last: Over the last hundred years, Vatnajökull has lost 15% of its mass.

Epic as the glacier was, the team’s main goal – combining freediving and ice climbing in a single outing – was still waiting.

The next morning, they headed over to a lake into which the Vatnajökull Glacier calves massive blocks. Climbing into their free diving suits, over which they put on dry suits with inflatable PFDs built in, they laced up their ice-climbing boots, wiggled into their harnesses, and strapped on their helmets before eventually inflating the paddleboards.

‘I was just hoping these paddleboards were tough,” says Emmet. ‘They’re inflatable, and the ice is sharp… you can pretty easily imagine a worst case scenario.’

Soon, they made it to an iceberg that looked promising. But despite the relatively safe appearance of this particular floating hunk of ice, Emmett still harboured doubts as to the wisdom of hacking his way up the side of it.

‘Two of my most trusted ice climbing partners, who have also climbed on icebergs, both said to me very explicitly: Ice climbing on icebergs is a really bad idea. Don’t do it,’ says Emmett. So I was apprehensive about it. But this iceberg was big; and it was definitely grounded, so that’s good – it wouldn't be spinning around and flipping upside down and stuff.’

After gingerly fitting their crampons, careful not to puncture the SUPs, the team climbed atop the ice, sinking their ice picks into the soft, slushy surface. Despite choosing what looked like a stable option, a floating block of ice can only provide so much stability. ‘I started to downclimb and the whole thing started swaying,’ recalls Martinello.

As Emmett continued to climb, Malaguti and Martinello got into the water. Malaguti took a breath, and dove down, while Marinello treaded water nearby in the freezing cold.

Martinello then positioned his lens, equipped with a special splitter device, evenly above and below the water-surface level. All the while, Emmett continued swinging his tools. Click went the shutter.

Having accomplished the primary ice-climbing and freediving objectives of their trip, the only box left to tick was surfing. Up in the town of Ísafjörður, a town in northwestern Iceland, Emmett and Martinello had – despite the 1 degree water and the gigantic chunk of ice sitting right in the middle of the lineup, which they had to navigate with each wave they caught – what they’d describe as one of the best surf sessions of their entire respective lives. But it didn’t come easily.

‘We got up one morning to go surfing in the north and our boards were completely frozen together,’ Martinello said. And though they escaped Iceland without frostbite, they came startlingly close to hypothermia on more than one occasion. That captures the overall theme of adventure somewhere like this. The rewards of exploring somewhere so cold and unspoilt are plentiful, but you’ll have to pay to play.

Yet perhaps the overarching takeaway they all came away with was the fine balance in which the natural world sits, one in which a single degree of warming can turn everything upside down. Before leaving the Vatnajökull Glacier after their first ice-climbing stop on the trip, the arch they scaled had already disappeared.

‘It seemed strange and sad that it would melt like that in Iceland. And in October, no less,’ ponders Emmet. ‘It really demonstrates the fragile nature of the ice cap, and how weather and climate change are affecting it more every year. Iceland is an amazing, diverse country that connects you to nature in all its forms. It’s all just incredibly real. A place to be valued, and protected.’

That, and bloody cold.