Up to index

Glymur and Hvalvatn


Pictures are at the bottom...

The weather forecast blue skies and low wind. A day to get out of town! With enough time for a decent sized mountain, I headed to Glymur. I was planning on hiking up to the top of Hvalvatn, the mountain on the north east shoulder of the waterfall. The drive out was uneventful and quiet, so quiet that my gps even refused to pick up satellite signals. (It wouldn't pick anything up again until later that night. weird)

The blue wsa fading out, as always it probably would have been best if I'd left earlier, but the forecast was holding. No rain, and high clouds, not much wind. Reaching the river crossing, I found out that yet again, the bridge was out. I heard from Wolfgang later on that this had been up in May, so it's obviously put up and taken down every spring and autumn. Oh well. I didn't feel like diving into the torrent down here, so it was time to explore the track up the west side of the gorge. This was perfectly acceptable, and the walking is actually easier, but you never get a view of the main falls.

Eventually reaching the top, I walked back upstream looking for a place to cross. And then decided not to. It was going to be wide and wet and cold, and the top of hvalfell was starting to get whipped by grey clouds. I decided I really didn't want to go and get wet, just to go and walk up into some clouds. But, it was far from home time yet. I wanted to see the damn lake, and if I couldn't see it from the top of the mountain, I would damn well see if from it's shore.

This ended up being another hour's walk. The land atop the heath was fairly rough, though there was an old road in sections. The lake was also further away than I thought. I guess I'd not looked at the map properly before I left :) Reaching the lake eventually, I was surprised to find a small dam wall, and locked sluice gates, and also a boat! I had been walking on sections of an old jeep track, but this was not exactly convenient boating.

Having finally reached the lake, I could now legitimately turn around and head home again. I hadn't really planned on the walk being four hours :)


page 1 page 2
Green Gorge

Green Gorge

Looking back down Hvalfjörður

Looking back down Hvalfjörður

Upper part of Glymur

Upper part of Glymur

Upper portions of Glymur

Upper portions of Glymur

Water spilling into the void

Water spilling into the void

Upper reaches of Glymur

Upper reaches of Glymur

page 1 page 2