Iceland has always been a dream of mine since being a young teenager, seeing early kayaking movies from Rush Sturges and stories about Shaun Baker’s trip (when I was probably around two years old in 1996) setting the new world record when he made the first descent of Aldeyjarfoss. More recently I was inspired by the film ‘For the Love’ where the theme of adventuring around Iceland was still a massive part of a trip there.
In June 2020 I was fortunate to be invited out to work as a raft guide and photographer once tourism had opened up in Iceland, what followed was three months of falling in love with the place. So much so when the offer to return as a guide in 2021 I jumped on the opportunity once again. Although I had amazing experiences and learnt a lot during my time at Viking Rafting, the opportunities to travel to the other side of the island for exploring were minimal. I’ve wanted to return ever since.
This year seemed right to return with a great excuse of linking some birthdays including Lyndons 35th and my 30th birthday and finish the trip back at Viking rafting for their Midnight Sun Festival. It also turned out to be the start of Oli’s gap year from university!
This trip like the last began with a bang, not the good kind but not as bad as the start of the last trip, as the three of us naively queued in security for forty-five minutes thinking we had just enough time we got through the queues at security and checked the departures screen to find out gate for our flight had closed, after splitting up myself Oli and Lyndon all going to the four different directions Lyndon lucked out at finding the gate straight away only be greeted by the shuttle bus departing and no amount of negotiations were listened too to get us on that plane unfortunately. As frustrating as the whole process was, there were no issues with getting our boats on the plane with Easyjet, Luton airport is still getting rebuilt after the multi story car park burnt down last year and the 1,500 metre walk with four kayaks, seven bags between the three of us took a long time and security was slower than we anticipated. Although there’s never really an excuse for missing a flight, this is now the second one I’ve missed … and I’m happy not to miss another. After paying just over £100 we were rebooked onto the next flight two days later.
After spending some time at my parent’s house and my dad (our hero) picking us up again from the airport we had recovered and were ready to go! Fortunately this time our airport experience was a plane sailing all the way through to getting on the river the same day, much to Oli’s excitement after three days of sleeping!
We decided to head to the North for three days before John’s flight landed, we had intended to stay around the south-east but water levels were not looking promising and it turned out a classic waterfall ‘falls of thieves’ is actually dam release with no idea of when the dam might release. With the lack of water, it was time to drive elsewhere.
While we were up north we headed to Viking rafting to get some joy kayaking in before the trip got going with adventure and stouts everyday… this plan really didn’t last long with us arriving straight to a waterfall called Reykjafoss about 5 km from the raft base and it turned into a lap fest with Oli taking the crown of five laps back to back before a well-earnt dinner.
Day two saw us at the raft base with many friends of the river from all over the world, including Andrew and Yann from Quebec who we would join up with for part of our trip. We jumped on the East Glacial river with the rafters but after a short nap for Oil it was kayaking time again to go back to Reykjafoss with Andrew and Yann for another lap or two.
While planning our third day in Iceland we knew no matter the plan we would have to pick John up from the airport 4 ½ hour away around midnight, undeterred we planned to drive another two hours in the wrong direction due to the lack of kayaking between the airport and the raft base. The plan was in place for a 7 am leave and head east to check out Aldeyjarfoss, the river level had been holding steady at 80 cumecs for a couple of days and we didn’t want to risk there being a hot spell and when we returned ten days later the river be a lot higher.
With only a minor cut to Lyndon’s nose, and one failed hand roll for Andrew, we counted that as a successful day out at Aldeyjarfoss with five descents. We left the Quebec boys with the plan to meet up again in the east a few days later.
After picking up John we eventually got to bed at three-am, for those of us who didn’t nap on the six-hour journey to the airport, it turned out to be a big day. Waking up the next day at eleven in the morning was no surprise really especially as it rained all morning, time well spent waiting for the weather to clear. We did some ‘culture’ and checked out a few waterfalls, and a recent volcanic eruption and got ourselves ready for our first big adventure. Markarfljótsgljúfur. I’ve heard stories of the beauty of this canyon and seen glimpses when at ‘Fly Over Iceland’ and it was time to head in there for ourselves. The journey started with some interesting time on the famous F (Fjall) roads, Fjall being the Icelandic word for mountain.
Once we got to the river it was quickly spotted the river was high, this also immediately put my dream of paddling the waterfall at the start of the canyon to an end for this trip. The only four descents of this waterfall were at lower levels and for good reason, strong cross lip currents and seam lines, a gnarly cave on river right, huge boils and an unmeasured landing pool meant the risks were far too high for me and the rest of the team to run this waterfall and after a long think whilst having lunch I remembered I was here to explore and immerse myself in the canyon below, not just to run a waterfall.
We had an incredible adventure from working out access to the canyon to playing a game of boules whilst waiting for Lyndon to run the eight kilometre shuttle.
Our final two friends Harry and Piers joined the trip as we drove to the infamous Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon full of huge Icebergs, whilst filming and having a great time we did manage to have almost two titanic moments, the first one being the loss of Chippyflex, my drone, lost along with the last twenty-four hours of footage including from the canyon the day before. Gutted would be an understatement, not for the drone, but for the amazing content on the SD card. The second near-titanic moment happened as we were paddling back to shore when an iceberg flipped just meters behind Oli, after the shock of it almost landing on him he enjoyed a surf from the wave it created.
After another couple of hours of driving along the stunning but stormy south coast, we made it to the stunning waterfall paradise of the Fossa River. The Fossa River is in the Icelandic history book for being the best waterfall run in the country and we found out why exactly. Another 4×4 drive to the put-in, this time we were all stoked that the boats didn’t fall off again. Immediately we noticed that the river wasn’t scorching high but we decided there was enough to still have plenty of fun.
After copious amounts of laps on the river and drops with the whole international crew it was time to say goodbye to Andrew and Yann once again as they headed west to catch their flight back to Montreal. This took us to half way through our trip with many more adventures planned ahead in the east of Iceland and the Midnight Sun White Water festival. Part two coming soon.
