These are some videos and pics from our 10 day bikepacking trip through the Westfjords of Iceland.
Hi all, Mason here. Uh, just a little video of a 10day bike packing trip I did in the west fjords of Iceland. I hope you enjoy. Okay, just a little hike today. I’m above and this is the devil seed. And you can see, yeah, worked up a little sweat. Only about a half a kilometer climb, but kind of fun and a good view. Uh, a picture of which I’ll include with this post. Pretty cool. Okay, first day of riding. We’re at 630 m. We came from sea level, rode up to the Coast Guard inst uh radar installation here, and uh yeah, we’re on a little platform here. And there’s a nice little drop off all the way to the ocean. So, and then you can see behind me there’s the uh now we’re still I think we’re at the edge of the fjord. So, that should be the North Atlantic. So, pretty beautiful around here. Okay, we’re at a radar station. This is our first day. Got a little ride in. Kind of harsh here with me. There’s a nice little overlook here and you can see down way down below us and all the birds. There’s a nice cliff here which makes me really nervous especially since I’m holding this thing over the cliff and kind of looking out over it. Um, pretty cool though. Yeah, beautiful. 630 m. Okay, day one. Getting a test ride in. Descending from uh 630 m. Came up to the top of one of these plateaus that you like you see over there uh just across the valley. So, a little shake down ride. See how the bikes are working. Get the legs warmed up. All is good. Okay, taking a little off route here. Kind of a cool little I think this used to be the old road. So, a nice little stream running. You can see the valley we’re in. It’s little town below. We just climbed up to 630 m of plateaus up there. And little town down here. We’re probably going to stop and try to get run. Should be fun. Well, if you’re hungry, um marsh is over there somewhere. You take the main road. I just thought it this would be a little bit more fun. Beautiful here. Okay, this is Okay, this is the first real day of uh riding. Harris and I just got started. Um we’re about 15 kilometers in. This is the first sun that we’ve seen since we’ve been to Iceland, which was 3 days ago. And uh the temperature and rain or precipitation changes pretty rapidly. So, got to keep all of our gear really handy to switch on and off cuz it switches from really warm to pretty chilly and rainy. And then it depends on whether you’re going uphill or downhill. Got to change for that. So, we’re learning. Uh we’ll get there, we hope. But long day today, 134 km and uh just hoping to make it. Okay, taking a little break here at the waterfall. Little hotring down the way. We can see the steam coming up beside the road. It’s just draining into the fjord. But um these waterfalls are I mean there’s thousands of them. In fact, if I turn, you can see across the way. I think there’s another one over there. I think that’s what I’m showing you. But um obviously a little cloudier today, but um still really good weather. It’s warm. Like 50 what? 52 53 and uh I don’t know, another long day. Probably another 6 hours today. And don’t know exactly where we’re staying, but having fun. Hey, we’re riding around the fjords, the edge of the fjord, and every once there’s a little tunnel like this. It’s pretty cool. And it’s cold in the tunnel. Kind of reaching the end of a yard here. And uh got some snow up there. the glacier still there on the uh north faces of the mountains. And we’ll make a turn here and head out back to the end of the uh the entrance of this fjord. But not much around here. You can see foot waterfalls off to the right and uh up front ahead of us. There’s got to be like 15 20 waterfalls heading down from that glacier. Absolutely beautiful. Okay, Harsh and I are up in these uh it’s almost a high plane, but we’re still going up pretty pretty good. Um you can see the road and the car coming down up in the distance. We just went some through some 10 10% grade stuff which was fun, but we’re getting a good breeze now so cooling off a little bit. And we’ve done about 10 km of this and we’ve got about another 10 kilometers of climbing to go. So, lots of fun. Okay, we’re on day four here and uh about 20 km. About a 80 85 kilometer day. Just stop at the uh sheep hering museum, which is a little bit weird, but I don’t know. And we’re right along this uh beautiful coastline with the beautiful turquoise sea and the mountains and sheep all around. Of course, we’re really lucky. You can see the sunshine, so it’s beautiful. Really enjoying it. Bit of a headwind here, though. Okay, taking a look at the hill we’re going to climb over there. This is the start of it. You can see the going up there a little bit and then it crosses back up there and we go over the top somewhere around there. So, looking forward to a good climb. The second big climb of the day. Okay, day five. Couple of mountain passes today. You can see uh got a lot of low cover low uh low clouds today and uh lots of mist and fog last night. It’s coming out of that valley. Here comes Harsh, I think, in the background. And uh yeah, nice weather. It’s I mean it doesn’t look good, but it’s um it’s very comfortable. It’s like 50° and not zero wind. So, it’s uh it’s great. Cool. Brutal climb. Lot of loose gravel, wind in your face, crosswinds. First I got to stop on my I’m basically at the top and uh show you some of the scenery. You can see Harsh down here grinding away. He sticks with it. Well done, Harsh. Uh good morning. Start of day six here. So, uh you can see uh this is this is where we camped here in this valley. And you got the uh cold waterfalls on the uh side. So, slept with the sound of waterfalls. Cold on this side. But if we turn to this side, we’ve got hot springs. You can see the steam coming up. They said it comes out of the ground at about 70° C, roughly 150 155° F. And then they uh they run it, heat their house, and uh have a nice uh couple of hot tubs and warm showers and a warm swimming pool and all that kind of stuff. But nice camp, nice little campground. Little farm, family-owned uh farm. And uh yeah, pretty cool. Beautiful. Had rain last night, but it’s nice this morning. Almost looks like the sun’s going to come out. Hey, day what? Day six. I’ve been on this hill. Ah, 30 minutes now. Weather turned gray, a little rainy, very windy as you can hear. Let me get into the wind break here a second. It doesn’t matter. Okay. Anyway, not as pretty as most days, but it’s good to be on a bike today. Hope you’re having a good day. Nice harsh. Now this is real wet. Finally. We keep turning back into these yards. Every time we turn south or north. I don’t know. We got guns super fast. There we go. It feels like 55 40 it’s raining after. Oh well. Okay, checking in here on day seven. Uh 12 km climb, 410 m of elevation gain. Uh, and a nice little headwind to just to make it interesting, just to spice it up a bit. Uh, beautiful weather though. As you can see, pretty dry. And, uh, yeah, it’s good after this. Uh, two more mountain climbs after we stop and roo and get something to eat. And uh just like they say in Haiti, the Haitian proverb is beyond the mountains, more mountains. Let’s go. Harsh. This is a tough one. There you go. No problem whatsoever. Nice. All right. When is today? Uh day six. the greatest weather today, which amazing in Iceland when it’s uh kind of rainy and windy like this. It just doesn’t even seem that cold. I don’t know. It’s not too bad. We’re doing okay. Making good time despite the uh wind. We go down the ford and it’s in our face. And then we go out the fjord and get to our tail. So, got to get a little like interval training. Anyway, uh that’s what we’re doing today. Still beautiful. It is beautiful uh around here. Hey, day seven. A beautiful morning this morning. Riding along the coast. It’s on coastal marshlands. Nice big waterfall to our right here. Couple of them. And uh beautiful mountains. We’re kind of on the flat here. And in a few kilometers, we’re going to head into the mountains that you can see up here in the distance and make a pass over to another fjord. And so just enjoying the fine weather this morning cuz you never know what will happen this afternoon. So all is well. Day seven. This is uh we’re up in the mountains. This is the more the more arid terrain we’ve been through. Kind of looks similar to some of the things you see out west like Wyoming. Uh yeah. One more big mountain pass to go today and we’re already at uh what 60 kilometers 70 km and uh that’ll be the end of our day at about 88 km. So uh been a good day. Uh just one more big climb and that’s it. We’ll wrap it up. Hey, still day seven. to another one. As we go through this valley here, we’ve got a 12 km climb. About 410 m of altitude gain, saying it’s about I don’t know 9% grade average. That’s what they’re saying. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Uh anyway, you can see a beautiful valley uh kind of behind me now as I pull my arm out of the way so you can see. And uh yeah, it should take us about an hour and a half to get up this thing. That’s why we’re here, though. Okay, we picked up a sheep dog here on day seven. Don’t know what it’s looking for, but just came running alongside us. Have no idea where it came from, why it’s out, but there it goes heading up the hill. Birds some sheep. And I mean, it looks like it’s working. There it goes. It’s taking off after the sheep. Huh. Weird. And going to probably bring them down. Okay, we’ll do the morning video from the uh from off the bike this time. Well, kind of. I’m still straddling the bike, but day eight about 90 kilometers today. And uh just had breakfast at a little inn. So nice European style breakfast. Best thing about it was they had chocolate cake for breakfast. Yeah. So nice little waterfall here. We’re expecting more of these today. Uh I hear that the Pearl of the West fjords is on this route. Is that today? Yeah. So we should be uh getting a shot of that later today. Thought it was windy the other day. Not so much. Today is windy. I don’t even know how. The road is pretty much flat here. I’m in lowest gear and I just crawled in the lock. Yeah. Yeah. It’s windy. Okay. Day eight. Pretty long climb here on gravel today. As you can see, Rod’s going over the mountain ahead to the left a little bit. Clearly windy. Lot of headwind. Side wind too. Crosswind here. But uh yeah, not too bad. Supposed to see some beautiful waterfalls today. So all is good. Little more barren on this side of the gorge. There isn’t any wild flowers or vegetation. All right, all is well. Okay, this is weird. Day eight. We’re riding through the tunnel. It’s uh 5.6 kilometer long tunnel. There’s a weird noise in here. Must be the fans. Oh no, there’s a truck coming. Uh, wow. That’s loud. And you can see hard up in front of me. But fortunately, there’s this little sidewalk we can ride on. And uh, it’s not too bad, but we’ll be in here for a while. Okay, day nine and we’re a little bit ahead of schedule, so we changed the route up. We’re camping in Pengary and we’re just going to do a day route. So, drop the bags at the campsite. Just leave them there. And we’re riding up this little valley uh between the mountains from one fjord to the other. So, um it’s kind of nice to get off one of these little m on one of these little mountain roads. This is uh really beautiful. A little different than what we’ve seen before. or this very jagged peaks that you see and ridges uh up ahead are not the norm. Um usually it’s something with a flat top. Um so very cool and again another beautiful sunny day. Um not as windy as yesterday of course. Very cool. Well, here comes a little harsh. Every time I think I got to go back and get him. Here he comes. He’s pretty determined. And uh man, he’s just he’s got some real endurance. He’s uh it’s pretty impressive. I’ve given up on him a few times today. Here he comes. Never fails. Look at him chugging. Man, that was a long hill. All right, here’s Harsh and I. We came up to a a peak. This is 998 m. Yeah. I don’t know. We’re up high. Uh give you another view here of what we’re seeing, which is absolutely gorgeous. And it’s a beautiful day. Came from sea level all the way up here in one continuous climb. The peak over there is still in the clouds. And it’s just a rolling around. Okay, day 10. Not the prettiest of days, but must say what we get. Scenery is not so pretty yet either. We’re going to go over another mountain pass here. Looks like the weather’s kind of soft in a little bit today. Maybe not. Oh well, we’ve seen a lot already. So, all is well. Okay, day 10. Uh, last mountain of the trip mountain pass. And as you can see, there’s nothing to see. So, nothing to see. And uh yeah, so I’m just going to get some more warm gear on and head down and get some coffee. It’s been fun. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh. [Music] Oh. [Music] Oh, [Music] heat. Hey. [Music]