Day 182-hiking Vikrafell

   July 4-The U.S. embassy invited Sally “and a guest” to a reception this afternoon to celebrate Independence Day.  Sally wrote the embassy staff to find out if the kids could come, but we received no reply.  While we could have left the kids with friends in Borgarnes, Sally had hoped to take them to Reykjavík to do some sight-seeing as well.  In the end, we decided not to attend the reception.  We have been to the embassy and have met the staff a couple other times as well, so it was not quite as exciting of a prospect as it had been six months ago.  When Pálmar reminded me about the weekly Bifröst hike, we made the decision to remain at Bifröst today.  So, I spent the day writing blog posts, Sally made plans for her parents’ upcoming visit, the kids played around and worked on Gunnison school work, and Alex spent some time with Þorgerður, whose family came back to Bifröst today after some extensive travelling.

We hiked up the Kiðá river, which
empties on the southwestern side of
Hreðavatn, before turning west and up.


   At 5pm, the hiking group met and we drove to the west side of Hreðavatn, where we started our three hour hike to the top of Vikrafell, which is the mountain that dominates Bifröst’s western skyline.   With ten people in the group, we moved pretty slowly and we only climbed about 1400 feet to get to the top of the 1700 foot tall peak, so it was not a particularly difficult hike.  Thankfully, the rain from earlier in the day had come to an end and the rain to the south of us never moved back over us, so the hike was mostly pleasant.  The only drawback were the gnats.  Whenever we would stop, they would start swarming us.  I was particularly sensitive to them, since they reminded me of mosquitoes, so I felt the need to swat at them continually.  The gnats also annoyed the Icelanders, but not to the same extent, since they are more used to them.  Thankfully, there are no mosquitoes in Iceland!

In this panorama to the east, the cinder cones Rauðbrók and Grábrók are on the left,
lake Hreðavatn is on the right, and Bifröst's campus is sandwiched in between.

This is essentially the same panorama as above along with one of Vikrafell's false peaks.

Lake Vikravatn and the view to the north of Vikrafell's peak.

Lake Langavatn and the view to the west.  Pálmar is on the left.  Stefán, on the far right, is the director of finance at Bifröst, an avid hiker, and the leader of this hike. Next to Stefán is Stefán, who grew up in the area, teaches finance at Bifröst, and is the father of Joslyn's friend, Jóhanna.  The other guy in the picture is busy uploading to his Facebook page the picture he just took of the group on the peak.  Now, that is crazy!

   Meanwhile, Sally and the kids went over to Emma’s for hot dogs.  Lára wandered by their new duplex while they were sitting and talking, and they waved for her come in and join them, which she did.  They continued to sit and chat until Pálmar and I returned from the hike.  We joined them for some hotdogs and beer, as we all sat around and talked while the kids ran around outside or played inside with Þórsteinn’s Playmobil toys.  We finally pulled ourselves away at 11:30 and got to bed somewhat early……