Landmannalaugar – Thórsmörk Hike (Day 4)

From Emstrur to Thórsmörk Valley

In terms of views, this was not the best day. The landscape continued to be bare but overall more boring than on the previous day.

We left the Botnar camp well after 9AM, when most of the groups and travelers left already.

The first part of the hike that day was kind of interesting and even a little challenging. For example, we had to go down a slippery slope supporting ourselves with a rope.

But for the most of the day the hiking trail was pretty easy.

As usual, our guide entertained us with stories of people who died along this trek. Most of the stories were about people doing stupid things and ending up dead because of that. Here is the story he told us at this dramatic canyon.

The canyon is deep with a very fast river and a pretty big and scary waterfall. A group of travelers from Russia came to this place to cross the river on jeeps. Among them was a young couple that just got engaged. They had 2 jeeps that they roped together and started crossing the river. The river turned out to be mightier than the couple’s jeep and started to carry it forward, the rope broke, their jeep started to roll and carried them down the waterfall. They died. The people in the other jeep survived because they did not get a chance to start crossing the river. Oh those Russians.

Overall, a sad story, but we had to continue our journey, which thankfully did not entail crazy river crossings.

However, we were not done with the canyons and rivers that day. Here are just some of the highlights.

Gradually, the volcanic desert started to acquire more and more colors. At the beginning, there were just patches of green moss or some resilient grass, but the further we went the more we saw various types of vegetation.

At some point we noticed that small bushes or trees started popping up here and there along the trek. We figured that Thórsmörk must be near.

And we were right: Thórsmörk was near. We entered a small forest and in no time got to our hut.

We spent a lovely evening in Thórsmörk. Our group had a whole room reserved for us. I helped our guide cook a mushroom soup, our Irish companions grilled salmon, everyone felt a satisfaction of completing the trek without a major accident but with a lot of excitement. And we all discussed how we were going to complete yet another day of hiking — up to craters Magni & Modi.