Iceland review - 2016, Page 107

SPECIAL PROMOTION
ADVENTURES
ICELAND REVIEW 105
Driving the main road along the south
coast of Iceland, skirting the island’s
outer edge at sea level—craning your neck
to see waterfalls tumble down from high-
land plateaus, and glimpsing tongues of
glaciers between sheer craggy cliffs—it’s
natural to wonder: what’s inside this coun-
try? Arcanum’s snowmobiling tour on the
Mýrdalsjökull glacier offers the chance to
strike out into new territory and uncover
some of the secrets hiding off the main
highway.
One clear day in early spring, we turn
off Route 1 and pull into Arcanum’s base
camp. The company has been leading
tours along the south coast for 23 years
now; their trips, also including glacier walks
and ATV tours, take advantage of the area’s
incredible natural variety—the legacy of
millennia of volcanic activity. Our guides kit
us out in hazmat-orange jumpsuits and hel-
mets, and we clamber into an old US Army
truck, now customized with tractor wheels
and upholstery like a 70s VW camper van.
We rumble up a dirt track until we reach the
snow, where our Arctic Cats await.
AND WE’RE OFF
Our tutorial is efficient: here’s the throttle,
here’s the brake. Lean into the turns. And
we’re off. We’re heading to the high point
of the glacier, atop the caldera of the Kat-
la volcano. Our convoy features riders of all
ages, many couples, most leaning into the
same learning curve as I am, as we gradually
sharpen our turns and hold our lines tighter.
I’m getting into it now, pressing down on
the throttle to accelerate straight up a steep
white hill, like a rocket bound for the pure
blue sky beyond the crest.
At the summit of Mýrdalsjökull with Arcanum’s glacier snowmobiling tours.

RACE TO THE TOP
At the top, we pull in, all in a row, facing
back the way we came. Previous days’ melt,
wind and refreezing have shaped the surface
of the glacier into peculiar feathery ripples
of ice and snow. I look out to the sea; the
day is clear enough that I can make out a
single fishing boat chugging along on the
shimmering water. Stretched out before
me, I can see the promontory at Dyrhó-
laey, and the abrupt, humpbacked moun-
tain Pétursey, an island which emerged as
recently as 800 years ago, now surrounded
by black-sand beaches and yellow-brown
fields of dune grass. To my right, I can look
down (down!) on a sweeping of black rocky
ridge, partially covered in snow; higher up,
the bedsheet-smooth white glacial cap of
Eyjafjallajökull covers the infamous volcano
below. Everything is bathed in that particular
low-angled Icelandic sunlight, the kind that
attaches fine, rounded shadows like brush-
strokes to everything it touches.
I had wanted to see new parts of Iceland.
What I saw were parts of Iceland I thought I
knew, as if for the first time.
arcanum.is
BY MARK ASCH. PHOTOS BY GEIR ÓLAFSSON.