Distance covered: 33 miles
Now that I’m fully aware of how important the weather still is, my first, early morning thought is for a sky update, pee and breakfast will come only later. It turns fairly quiet, cloudy but not overcast and it doesn’t rain. That’s good enough. Let’s go hiking.
Distance covered: 30 miles
I’m now where I dreamt to be when I left Myvatn a long time ago (that’s 4 days). It’s been no death march to get here, in fact it was fairly quiet with some glorious times along the way. Now there’s no expected obstacles to get to the F26, once there I’m in relative safety no matter the weather. I feel less vulnerable. That means I’m less worried by an early morning overcast. Now I’ve got some miles to do.
Distance covered: 25 miles
I get my promised good weather window, it is calm and sunny in the morning. My first sunny day in Iceland 2016!!! Look at that blue sky:
Brilliant blue skies at last. Vatnajokull hides behind low cloud
Distance covered: 32 miles
The weather is still mostly clear when I wake up in the morning. Where’s all that forecasted rain? I don’t want to know. I’m delighted to be able to feel relaxed and eager to start the day’s hiking, first time on this trip that I feel that way. At this stage, my first encounter with the outcome of sandy ground camping is nothing but a minor inconvenience. I’ll need to get used to this black sand all over the place. I feel for the tent but it’s its job after all.
Distance covered: 28 miles
The problem with staying in such a nice hut is that it’s difficult to leave but I have that one clear, early wake-up call and no room for doubt. The weather seems to resume where it left it the day before which is not that bad of a news. It is demanding weather to be outside but far from my fear induced nightmare dreams. It is cloudy, windy, cold and generally unsettled but it is not raining consistently and there are even occasional spells of brightness.
Distance covered: 30 miles
I set out in death-march mood. The sky is severely overcast but at least it’s not raining yet. This is a big help for a start.
Dark day in Myvatn
Distance covered: 25 miles
I’m happy to face one final road walk today. The wimp in me got scared yesterday and I’m fine with that middle ground in not giving up but taking the less compromising route. It won’t be a memorable journey but I’ll be worry free no matter the weather. Real wilderness will need to wait a bit longer.
Distance covered: 28 miles
It starts overcast and windy, at least the wind will be on my back. The other good news is that I’ll be on a real hiking trail today. A rare, welcome event, I won’t find another such trail until the final 2 days of the trip. I also know this trail is easy to follow, not only from reports but from previous, own experience, and this is the other, funny part: I was hiking on this trail 16 years back, no less. Back then, the same northerlies as expected today left me dripping wet and cold to the point that I bailed out mid-way. I’m here now to fill that gap.
Distance covered: 29 miles
Day 2 is typically a tough one in fastpacking trips with no quarter. It is the day when the body is already beaten by the previous day’s effort but not yet used to the constant beating of a thru-hike. I can’t take it easy though. If I mean to cross Iceland in 13 days, I can’t just take it easy, not even for one day, not even for day 2.
Distance covered: 28 miles
It’s overcast and gloomy as I wake up in Akureyri but I commit to not worry about the weather, at least until I start the actual hiking. I still need to get to the starting point and that is a few hours bus ride away. This is Iceland and the most mundane bus trip is a spectacular event so I sit back and relax.
Does it apply at all?
The Lightweight Backpacker in the High Latitudes
You’ll have heard the argument many times: UL is fine and dandy in predictable, mild environments like (the example goes on and on) the US southwest. Such argument is usually a way of saying it doesn’t work anywhere else with a rougher climate. It may look like basic nay-saying but it may undermine your UL plans when visiting such a place as Iceland1.
Pack / Tent / Sleeping bag / Mat / Stuff sacks / Clothing / Towel / Poles / Stove
This is about gear, Iceland and myself. It’s all mixed together. I mean to assess how my kit worked in Iceland but some of the sections are necessarily decontextualized, if only because I love to talk about gear, in essence because I’m talking about myself.
Jon Ley’s Plhumf.com website is almost as old school as mine but I needed to look nearly nowhere else. His 2006 trip fits exactly my idea for this traverse and I’ll actually be following his footsteps as long as they haven’t been erased by some new lava flow.
Access / Direction of travel / Hiking window / Maps / Digital / Resupply / Fuel / Huts / SAR
The information here is what I’d needed to know when planning this trip. It is organized in a north to south fashion, where applicable. It should be easy to apply to a south to north trip anyway.
Cool facts / Terrain & Relief / Hiking grounds / Camping / Weather / Wildlife / Landscape
It was this beautiful. Consistently
Hiking coast-to-coast-something is a very powerful idea, it just makes sense from a travelling standpoint. It gives the traveler perspective over the territory. It makes for a trip with a beginning and an end.
Final steps of the traverse. The Atlantic in the background
Crossing Iceland was intense. Here are a few relevant thoughts
I dream of the gear I’ll take to Iceland. These are my current thoughts:
Stephenson’s Warmlite 2C
Wamlite 2C in the Lapland hills
It’s exposed and potentially windy in the Iceland highlands so the shelter of choice must be wind-worthy. The other key factor in shelter choice is sandstorms, which may not be an obvious feature of a sub-polar region but it is in this particular case: Iceland is all lava. In the highlands, fine volcanic dust covers wide areas devoid of any vegetation that could help stopping it being blown around. When it is, it gets into the most intimate corners.
Thinking ultralight challenges the doctrine and the doctrine inevitably strikes back. The following is about some of the usual arguments thrown on the ultralight style
Just when you thought you were done with any new flavor of “packing”, let me add another one…
First it was GSM. Then it was GPS. Then I got PLB.
Must not care about aesthetics
One of the problems with rain jackets is what happens at their lower edge: water drips down over a sensitive area where it soaks your pants at pocket height. It then soaks your underwear. It there’s enough water, capillary action may soak the lower section of your tops too.
Human pressure is an environmental issue pretty much everywhere the average human can reach. Protection figures are the common answer but they have limited effectiveness as they often fail to address the root of the problem: ease of access.
This is now an internationally famous trail, allegedly the most famous in the world. Many hikers from abroad come over for the journey. In the information age, one could think it’s easy to get such information about anything imaginable, yet it’s surprisingly easy to find people whose expectations about this trail were not met.
I had this revelation moment once during the early days of my hiking career. It was a very silly thing but it was symbolic. It opened a big door.
You won’t find many resources on this route in anything that’s not Spanish. Actually, there aren’t many in Spanish either. Most internet resources and guidebooks focus on one-day activities and most of them will be about climbing peaks. Overnighting outside is not a popular thing, neither is long distance hiking.
The high pressure conditions remain and the weather should be clear. I don’t know what caused yesterday’s fogs, maybe some cold air mass in the area. I would expect a new, clear day today no matter how dark and thick the fog was yesterday but I have a plan in case it remains: the track I was following would actually take me out of the mountains. It’d be acceptable given this is my last day of hiking.
I wake up to a dry tarp and a view of a frosty valley below, fully endorsing yesterday’s camp choice. Actual site and orientation missed the best mountain view but I could see sunset and sunrise instead:
Good morning
In my lowest altitude camp I wake up to negative temps, high humidity and a good frost all over the place as a consequence. This is a classic example of temp inversion driven by sustained high pressure conditions: cold air sinks and humidity condenses. During the night there’s no sun to warm things up so the system stays locked.
In the morning my tarp is dry and the grass around is dry as the valley bottom has frosted over. What a huge difference a short distance can make in the camping experience and how much nicer it is to pack a dry shelter.
Frost in the valley below
A small cirque at the very headwaters of a cantabrian valley, that’s the definition of the perfect overnight spot and I feel fortunate to wake up in such glorious place. The only downside in a mid-November morning is how long the sun takes to shine. I leave the area before I get a chance of getting any warmth. Morning lights are beautiful anyway.
Yesterday’s last effort was more than a last push for the sake of performance, it was also a statement.
It’s often easy to skip crest sections by joining saddles along the slopes or the base of the hill. This is fine as it is all part of what a High Route means: the idea is to follow a coherent line along the divide. Then there are cases like yesterday evening’s: the road to the ski resort runs parallel to the divide crest and leads to a gentle climb back to the top on a service track. I could have done all that in less than a couple of hours. It is not cheating, it’s just the -in this case- easy way.
The night goes in between heaven and hell. Heaven because that’s what the night usually is: a time to relax, do nothing but rest, heal the wounds of the day’s work, feel at peace with the world. Hell because sometimes the world gets aggressive and you become a tiny piece of nothing at its mercy.
I took the early morning train from Leon to Busdongo de Arbas, 4 km down the road from the Pajares pass in the divide. The train line goes north across the plains and into the foothill mountains, along a narrow, winding valley.
At maximum load
I got this pack as my new thru-hiking pack. No frivolity, I really needed a new one. My old thru-hiking pack was worn out beyond usability after more than 10 years. Not bad. I researched the market for a pack that would meet my requirements and the Southwest won.
I took the divide at the Pajares road pass after a short hike up the road from the nearest railway station. The choice wasn’t random: that’s where my previous hike in the High Route finished a few years back. I would hike east and as far as I could go in 8 full hiking days.
This is very personal and only tangential to the actual route. It’s about challenges, fears and how I’d cope with it all. The challenge will be at a rather emotional level.
Day 6: when my smile was genuine
Hiking the High Route in the off-season was something I could do. Feeling comfortable about it was a different thing. This latter was my challenge.
This is a summary of some specifics about the Cantabrian Ranges and their High Route traverse.
Hiking the crest
Summer-style, multi-day backpacking in late fall requires some adaptation, not only in the gear: I usually take lower level, less exposed routes and/or plan for less days out in a row. This time I chose a summer route in summer style: 8 hiking days, self supported and a seamlessly compromising location.
November is a tricky time to backpack in the northern Iberia ranges: weather can be anything in a wide range of scenarios. One of them is very harsh, including cold, wet, fog, snow or the whole bunch.
The Cantabrian Ranges
A weekend (2 days and 2 nights) out in mild, post-summer conditions is not the most demanding use case for a pack this size. The Southwest was not fully loaded with only two days worth of food and minimal spare clothing, base weight below 4 kg. Yet it was my new toy and I was eager to try it. This is how it turned out.
I have a white pack
My previous long-distance-backpacking pack is more than 10 years and thousands of miles old. That’s a lot for a lightweight pack. I’ve used it until it’s so worn out that it’s not usable anymore.
This is not about outdoor stuff DIY on a grand scale but more about the great power of a small thing, be it a sewing machine or the skill and dedication to sew manually. Works the same.
Throughout the years I’ve met wildlife many times, as it’d be expected. Some encounters have been very special, be it for the particular animal, the circumstances or the quality of the encounter. Yet it’d be easy for me to pick one up. This is why:
What follows is a summary of the common questions about backpacking in Spain that I’ve been questioned or heard about when travelling abroad or over the net. It’s meant for a wide audience. If a question/answer seems obvious to anybody, consider it will probably not be so to others.
Where “winter” stands for mountain weather in the mid latitudes for that half of the year
Looks like black&white except for the tent
General belief about winter conditions in the mid latitudes relates to highly technical activities where the activity itself is the goal and not the means to get somewhere: climb the mountain for the sake of climbing it, not to cross onto the other side.
There’s nothing really fancy in the layering paradigm. In essence, it’s what many of us already do in the urban environment as a daily routine in response to changing conditions like getting into the office block: layer down one coat.
In the backcountry, there are additional factors though:
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