Originally, there would have been two trips in two weeks in the university lecture ‚Winter Mountaineering‘. But as we are in Iceland, we have to consider as well the bad weather. Therefore, the last week’s trip was cancelled, but one more day added to the last trip.
Day 1 to 2 (Sólheimajökull)
Our trip started because of this on Thursday at the snout of the big Sólheimajökull. Niklas, Yannis and I built up our tents (3 persons per tent and we had been about 25 students and 3 guides) and started in 3 big groups the education for crevasse rescue and later on a bit of ice climbing. The late night was dry, without wind and very pleasant. On the next day, we tried out safe glacier traversing in a group by using a rope. In the early afternoon, after the first heavy rains over the glacier, we went back, built down the tents and went by car over the road 261 to the base of Tindfjöll.
Day 3 to 4 (Tindfjöll)
Then, all together, we went up on the south side of the first cottage to about 700 m height. With the steady view at the massive Eyjafjallajökull and the big plateau of Myrdalsjökull, we built up our base camp. From this base camp, we started to reach Saxi (1308 m), one of the tops of Tindfjöll at the next day. Again, divided in 3 groups. The Saturday was a sunny and almost windless day. The best weather to reach the top, but with care for any types of avalanches of course, because of the increasing temperature air temperature. Around half past 3 in the afternoon, we reached finally Saxi, the highest top of the mountain range. As we went back over the glacier of Tinfjalljökull we connected our self again with a rope (I tried to be the leading person, worked quite well).
In the later evening, we arrived our ‘base camp’ and get into our sleeping bags relatively early. But it wasn’t that a pleasant night, because of an upcoming storm, which had loose some of our tent to ground connections. But some of our group mates went around in the storm and fixed this, super friendly.
On Sunday, we did some final ice-axe self-rescue on a steep slope and avalanche rescue and went around midday down back to the cars. We ended our experience bringing trip in a small gas station in Hvölsvöllur.
Here are some pictures of our trip for the lecture 'Winter
Mountaineering'