Due to additional responsibilities with the Vatnajökull National Park – I have been tasked with helping to assess and monitor the ice caves in the nearby glaciers – my calendar is now fully booked for October and November.
As we are coming into September, it is still a bit too early to talk specifically about which ice caves will be accessible – and worth visiting – next winter. The glacier will continue to change in significant ways over the next weeks and may open up new opportunities or remove others in the progress.
In previous years we have occasionally been lucky enough to have ice caves that were accessible as early as mid September, but this year the situation is not quite as clear and I am currently not very hopeful before November.
There are definitely many spectacular features on the glacier that are worth exploring in both summer and winter, but when making your tour bookings please keep in mind that accessing ice caves is only possible under certain circumstances and we may need to adjust our plans and/or tour locations depending on the conditions.
After the recent tragic accident I am also expecting the National Park to enact new regulations on tours to ice caves and onto the glacier in general, and while I do not expect any dramatic changes to the type of tours that I offer it is certainly an aspect to keep in mind. Since all operating permits are scheduled to expire by the end of September, the new ones should be completed within the next few weeks which will hopefully clarify this situation.
Probably the last time we’ve been able to visit this unique place.
Right place, right time. I hadn’t been in this particular area of the glacier for about a month, so I knew this structure was likely to be still around but neither its condition nor at which time we would arrive there. It all lined up, the sun was in the perfect spot and just enough meltwater on the ice to make a perfect mirror. What a place to discover!
(from yesterday’s full-day ice cave tour — shot handheld with Sony A7C + Sigma 20/1.4)
I am very proud to announce that we have received the VAKINN quality and environmental certification for tourism in Iceland!
This is a huge step for us and puts us in the company of a small number of companies that are dedicated to the highest standards in environmentalism and quality – at this time only about 50 companies across Iceland have received this certification. We decided to take it one step at a time and have our tours certified at first, but are also considering expanding the certification to our guest house and are actively working towards the silver and gold environmental standards.
Of course a certification is one thing and what happens “on the ground” may be different – in many ways working toward this goal has not essentially changed the way I guide and operate my tours, but the guidance of the quality program certainly provides a bit more structure to some processes that were handled more implicitly. I am very thankful to the certifying agency Tún ehf. for their valuable feedback we received during the certification process.
I have no more open dates for any ice cave tours this season. My calendar is completely full until late March, with waiting lists for some dates.
Due to the warming temperatures and expected deterioration of the ice caves I will not accept additional bookings for the final week of March or into April.
This may change again as we get closer and the development of the cave becomes clear, so dates may open up again but I am not very hopeful given the very warm temperatures we are seeing at the moment.
My spring / summer tours will become available in the next weeks, too.
Unfortunately the bookings system seems to currently have a bit of a glitch and shows days in the calendar as available even though they are in fact fully booked — so when one then goes ahead and selects that day it gets confused and fails to present any open departure times.
I apologize for the inconvenience, and am working on getting that fixed but haven’t found a workable solution so far.
The next guaranteed available date as of right now (Feb 17th) is March 23rd.
I’ve had some fantastic ice climbing tours recently with very talented clients. The waterfalls aren’t quite ready yet after a very warm and wet November, but of course perfect ice can be found on the glacier pretty much year round – and with clear skies, calm and cold weather conditions were close to perfect! We were so busy climbing that I didn’t even manage to take a single “action” picture, but here is one from our way back that at least gives you an idea of the amazing weather we enjoyed. It rarely gets better than this…
Our safety plan is a living document. It is updated whenever we identify aspects that could be improved, and in recent conversations with Tún, our certifying agent for the VAKINN quality standards, we received some valuable feedback that we have immediately begun to incorporate.
We have put together a dedicated page with information on how we are addressing the spread of the new Coronavirus (COVID-19). If you have any questions, please do not hesitate and reach out to us!