Day 77. 15th September. Langisjór, Highlands, Iceland.

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So as at the end of the last post, here I was, on a remote Icelandic road, my vehicle stuck in the snow, a storm due that night and with no mobile phone reception.  I was also due to fly back to Australia in a couple of days and looking at having to buy new tickets.  That wasn’t a concern though.  No point worrying about things you can’t change.

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I went for a walk and at the top of a rise found I could see for kilometres.  I also had mobile phone reception.  So I rang the emergency number and found they had a vehicle out there, pulling other vehicles out of the snow.  They would come and help me get free.

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This image and the previous one show views that include the road that the rescue vehicle would be coming along.  If I had taken them from the same spot, I could have put them together for a panorama.

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So while I was waiting, what better than to admire the sparse beauty of the scenery and take a few photographs.

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Unlike the Beckett play, though, I had no companion and there were no stray people wandering in and out, and there was no-one with a rope around their neck.

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There were a couple of messenger boys, though.  In this case they were of the electronic kind, through the mobile phone.  I was asked for the GPS location and initially didn’t know because my camera GPS was not working.  But when I returned to the vehicle I found it on the car GPS, so I returned to the top of the hill and phoned the coordinates back.

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This is from beside where the car was, also showing a little of the road out.

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Day 77. 15th September. Langisjór, Highlands, Iceland.

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After surveying the lake, I headed off back towards civilisation.  This is a last glimpse of a corner of the lake.

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I was a little concerned because I had driven past the end of the F235 on a track to the house and the lake.  I thought that as long as I could get back to the F235 I would be alright.  The complicating factor that I had not anticipated was that though the snowfall was light, there was a fair amount of wind that had blown snow into some of the recesses of the road where there was a dip and a rise.  The snow in these places was up to about three feet deep.

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I came to such a place where I got bogged in a small incline, notwithstanding being in a 4wd in low range.  I backed up and got out and walked around to contemplate the situation.  It was possible to drive beside the road where there was little snow.  I did that successfully and was able to keep going.

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Now I was back on the F235 and the road conditions were better.  There were also some majestic views of the cool landscape.

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Visibility for driving was fine but distant visibility was intermittently constricted by clouds of snow driven before the wind.

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Somewhat later I got bogged again, and again found a route to drive around it and keep going.

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Another majestic vista.

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There was still some moss poking through the snow at some places on the side of the road.

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Fine patterns in the snow.

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I got bogged a third time going up a slope.  Again I backed up, got out, walked around and plotted an escape path.  This time I got it wrong.  I got too close to the road before I passed the part filled with snow and slipped in sideways.  There was no going forward or backing up.

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I was stuck and also I didn’t have a mobile phone signal.  There was a storm due that night.  I thought “Well at least I have shelter and food and also the rental car people know which road I was going to drive down and I’m due back in a couple of days.  I’ll just wait it out for three or four days until it clears and if necessary walk out.”

To be continued….

Day 77. 15th September. Langisjór, Highlands, Iceland.

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When I woke up early in the morning, before dawn, it had snowed.   I still had to drive back out but before that I took time to appreciate the serene beauty of this remote lake and its snowclad mountains.

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I had parked for the night beside the only building on the lake.  This is a house for rent.  There is sleeping bag accomodation for four on beds and two on a couch.  It has running water and a toilet and renting it comes with a licence to fish for trout in the lake.

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Langisjór is a deep glacial lake twenty kilometres long and up to two kilometres wide and 75 metres deep.  No mention of it is known before the late nineteenth century, which attests to its remoteness and was why I wanted to visit it.

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The lake’s name means Long Sea and because of the surrounding mountains, the lake can’t be seen until it is reached.

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Langisjór’s outlet is at the other end of the lake, near the glacier and about three kilometres from the inner edges of the lake.  It goes out through Útfall as a waterfall into Skaftá, which feeds into the lakes, rivers and marshes of Skaftárhreppur, in the next valley parallel south.

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A ridge caught in the light of dawn.

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There were plans five to ten years ago for Landsvirkjun, Iceland’s national electric company, to exploit this area for hydroelectric power.  After an intense national debate, those proposals were defeated and plans are underway to make Langisjór and its surrounding area a part of Vatnajökull National Park .

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