A few mores thoughts about the recent search & rescue operation we had on Hvannadalshnúkur (RÚV, Vísir), now that I’ve actually slept a bit.
We all make mistakes. As professional guides whose job it is to bring people into and back out of very remote areas, our mistakes have the potential of much more severe consequences, for ourselves and for our clients. And this is why training and experience are critical – to avoid making them, to identify them before the consequences become severe, and to be able to improvise a recovery from them.
Any guide who is convinced they have never made and never will make a single mistake probably just doesn’t yet have the experience to see where they should have acted differently, or has a dangerous ego that turns a blind eye to them.
Similarly, I don’t think there is a place for resentment against the guides involved. I cannot believe for a single moment that they were acting in a wilfully reckless manner, and everybody I talked with and who knows them is of the same opinion. Something went awry that day. But, again, we are all humans.
If this was just an incredible series of bad luck or some single mistake that wasn’t caught in time but is glaringly obvious in hindsight remains to be seen. Of course everybody is very curious and has many questions (myself included), but none of us knows all the facts and some of the publicised information may not even be fully accurate. It might take some days of reflection and many conversations, both amongst the people involved and between them and others, to get a clear picture of what happened and why.
Once we know more, we can go forward in a productive way – learn as much as we all can from what happened, and figure out what could be done to avoid those situations in the future.
Until then, I’ll see you in the mountains.
VAKINN Certified!
/in tours/by stepI 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.
No more open slots for ice cave tours
/in tours/by stepI 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.
Bookings
/in tours/by stepUnfortunately 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.
Ice Climbing!
/in tours/by stepI’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…
Privacy Policy Update
/in Uncategorized/by stepWe may send out customer surveys in the future to those who have opted in to receiving one during the booking process. I have updated our privacy policy to reflect this, and on the checkout page you will now find a new item to opt in to those surveys. I hope many will do so!
Existing bookings are unaffected and will not receive survey emails.
Safety Plan Updates
/in tours/by stepOur 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.
Safety Plan 2.4.1 – ENGLISH
Öryggisáætlun 2.4.1 – ÍSLENSKA
Glacier Radiology Support
/in glaciology/by stepI spent the first few days of September this year on the Vatnajökull ice cap, helping researchers from the Glacier Radiology Group at Stanford University with testing their prototype equipment (most of which will ultimately be used for research in the Antarctic and in Greenland). Overall conditions were amazing except for one storm day that we essentially spent inside our basecamp on Grímsfjall, where the Icelandic Glaciological Society maintains a small research station. I used the time to develop a small tool for importing their radiometry data into 3D software for visualisation – maybe a bit unexpected, but not really for a mountain guide who happens to also have a Ph.D. in computer science!
Driving on the lower parts of Skálafellsjökull was cumbersome, primarily because late summer snow tends to be extremely uneven and progress is slow. Higher up however a recent storm system had smoothed everything out and allowed us to cruise comfortably at good speeds. The flat surface was of course also much better for both the UAV and towed configuration we were testing. We encountered a few crevasses here and there, but they were all easily managed.
⚠️ Mobile device support for the 360° panoramas below is a bit dodgy – I am working on finding a better solution but for now those are best enjoyed on a full-sized computer. Sorry!
Grímsfjall is one of those surreal places that are hard to believe actually exist. And because of the particular local conditions, it also is very often hiding itself in a cover of fairly dense fog. I have been there many times, but rarely enjoyed visibility as good as this time. The views were just amazing. I also created a panorama further out above the caldera lake, and one from Svíahnukur vestry, the western peak of the caldera rim. You can flip through them below.
Policy Updates
/in Uncategorized/by stepI have updated our Safety Plan, and we now also have a formal Environmental Policy on our website. Nothing surprising in either document, I guess.
Incident Report – 2022-06-16
/in incident reports/by stepIn mid June of this year I was called for a rescue operation on the highest mountain of Iceland, Hvannadalshnúkur. This operation was widely reported and I had also written a short post about it earlier.
I had planned to delay publishing my own incident report until after the guides involved had published theirs, but have now come to the conclusion that it is not forthcoming. If their account of the events does become available in the future, I will edit this post to include a link to that as well.
You can download my own incident report here.
Names and other personally identifiable information have been redacted from this version.
Thoughts on guiding
/in Uncategorized/by stepA few mores thoughts about the recent search & rescue operation we had on Hvannadalshnúkur (RÚV, Vísir), now that I’ve actually slept a bit.
We all make mistakes. As professional guides whose job it is to bring people into and back out of very remote areas, our mistakes have the potential of much more severe consequences, for ourselves and for our clients. And this is why training and experience are critical – to avoid making them, to identify them before the consequences become severe, and to be able to improvise a recovery from them.
Any guide who is convinced they have never made and never will make a single mistake probably just doesn’t yet have the experience to see where they should have acted differently, or has a dangerous ego that turns a blind eye to them.
Similarly, I don’t think there is a place for resentment against the guides involved. I cannot believe for a single moment that they were acting in a wilfully reckless manner, and everybody I talked with and who knows them is of the same opinion. Something went awry that day. But, again, we are all humans.
If this was just an incredible series of bad luck or some single mistake that wasn’t caught in time but is glaringly obvious in hindsight remains to be seen. Of course everybody is very curious and has many questions (myself included), but none of us knows all the facts and some of the publicised information may not even be fully accurate. It might take some days of reflection and many conversations, both amongst the people involved and between them and others, to get a clear picture of what happened and why.
Once we know more, we can go forward in a productive way – learn as much as we all can from what happened, and figure out what could be done to avoid those situations in the future.
Until then, I’ll see you in the mountains.