Iceland review - 2013, Page 27

ICELAND REVIEW 25
Earlier this summer, emergency services in Iceland were kept busy helping tourists
who ran into trouble. In a span of less than a week, travelers drove their rental car
into a pit on a highland road that had yet to be opened, hikers were trapped by bad
weather on a mountain ridge, and 250 volunteers spent 24 hours searching for a
young woman who had failed to return from a short walk. This is her story.
By eygLó SvALA ArNArSdóTTIr PHOTOS By PáLL STeFáNSSoN
at 10 am on Friday, May 31,
Maylis Lasserre, a 24-year-
old woman from France
working at Heydalur, a farm
guesthouse and tour operator in the epony-
mous valley in the fjord Mjóifjörður in the
West Fjords, decided to go for a short walk.
“I wanted to hike up to the mountain and
just be away for two hours. There wasn’t
too much snow and I’m used to hiking,”
she says. Overjoyed with the first signs
of summer after a harsh spring and over-
whelmed by the vastness of nature, Lasserre
kept walking, in spite of not being dressed
warmly or wearing proper boots. “I guess I
didn’t think clearly. It was a lovely day and
I just kept going. At 3 pm I could see that
the fjord wasn’t far away but I was too high
up [to return the same way] and couldn’t
walk anymore because of the shoes. They
kept filling with snow and falling off at
every step, so I had to walk back and put
them back on. My socks were soaked and
my feet were wet. I had to take the shoes
off and just left them there.” Lasserre con-
tinued walking barefoot. “It’s hard to admit
that I was being stupid, but I was, leaving
with bad shoes and no equipment. I had no
phone and was only wearing jeans, a fleece
jacket and a big scarf. I hadn’t brought any
food because I only expected to be away
for two hours.” Eventually, Lasserre couldn’t
carry on because her feet were too sore.
“It’s strange to feel blocked. What should
I do now? I decided to stop and warm up
my feet by wrapping my scarf around them.
I made a shelter for my head and feet as I
realized that the rain was coming. Then I just
had to wait. I put my hands inside my jacket
but I was trembling.”
Meanwhile, the alarm had been raised at
Heydalur. Lasserre, who had worked there
since April, had been expected to take travel-
ers on a horseback tour at 2 pm. She had told
a colleague that she was going for a walk but
not where exactly. There were indications
that Lasserre had taken a different route, a
frequented hiking path up the mountain
Galtarhryggur on the opposite side of the
valley, so that’s where the people at Heydalur
went looking. However, the search proved
fruitless and the emergency services had to
be contacted. “We received the call-out at
1 am on Saturday morning. The police had
first carried out a field search investigation
to check whether the missing person might
have spent the night in Ísafjörður, for exam-
ple, to make sure this was an emergency,”
says Jón Arnar Gestsson, member of search
and rescue team Björg in Suðureyri and
board member of the Zone 7 district man-
agement for Slysavarnafélagið Landsbjörg
(ICE-SAR), a network of well-coordinated
volunteers responsible for search and rescue
in Iceland. Zone 7 stretches from the inner-
most part of the fjord Ísafjarðardjúp, from
which Mjóifjörður extends, in the northeast,
to Dynjandisheiði mountain pass in the
southwest. When Lasserre went missing, Jón
Arnar directed operations from the ground,
leading 249 people from 72 rescue squads.
They searched on foot—some teams had
Maylis Lasserre
and the farm’s dog
Loki.