Covid has made a lot of people do strange things that they would not usually attempt. Fed up with the limited hiking opportunities near my hometown of Toronto, I decided that I should try camping and backpacking. I have done a lot of day hikes, staying in huts or inns, and some car and canoe camping, but had not backpacked since I was a student. Why not get back into it in my mid-60s? And where to start?

I found that I could travel to Iceland without having to go into hotel quarantine on my return and that Iceland was on the “Green List” for a British hiking friend, so we decided to go there for two weeks and backpack the 55km Laugavegur Trail in four days. One website called it a “definite intermediate”, so that seemed like a good place to start.

We had read many websites, looked at maps, and thought we were well equipped and organized for the excursion, but we underestimated both the difficulty of the trail and the Icelandic weather…

We learnt a few things which might help if you are planning the hike.

Check your stove works with an Icelandic gas cylinder.

You cannot put camping gas cylinders in your airline luggage so you have to buy them in Iceland. However, Coleman gas cylinders, a very common brand in Iceland, do not work with all brands of camping stoves. Some stoves will not screw in far enough to allow gas to enter the burner. Check that your stove works with your cylinder before you start. If not, you can rent one from Iceland Camping Equipment Rental at Baronsstigur 5, a block south of Laugavegur Street.

There is no water on the first day of the hike

You can drink Icelandic water straight from the stream, but on the first day you are mostly on elevated exposed ridges and you do not cross any water sources, so bring what you need for the day.

At the end of the first day, you are 500m above where you started, but you have done over 1,500m of ascent on the way.

There are a lot of small ups and downs on the trail. We hiked at the end of August, so valleys that might have been filled with snow earlier in the season only had a small amount of snow left. We had to hike down a muddy bank onto the snow, across the snowfield, and then back up the other bank.

Sometimes you are not allowed to camp at Hrafntinnusker.

Locals told us that if the weather is really bad at Hrafntinnusker they will not allow you to camp there and insist you keep on going to Alftavatn. Even if you have time to do this, that would be a brutal 10 – 12 hour hiking day. We were very lucky to get a bed in the hut, as the conditions for camping looked grim, with a night-time low of 4C and 30 kph wind gusts.

An increase in elevation of 500m (1,500 ft) may not seem much but in South-Western Iceland it’s enough to expose you to winds that have crossed the North Atlantic without any interruption.

Icelandic weather forecasts are unreliable.

We left Hrafntinnusker in good spirits as we were told that after two hours of hiking in the cold, wind and rain, the weather would get better once we descended towards Alftavatn, and the sun would come out around noon. All totally untrue; we hiked all day in cold, wet and windy weather.

Álftavatn may be pretty in good weather…

… but if it’s windy it is very exposed and the wind just howls across the lake to the camping area. It is worth hiking the additional 4km to Hvangill, especially if there is room in the hut!

The trail markers are red from Landmannlaugar to Alftavatn and then blue with LV on them south of Alftavatn.

This greatly confused us as we headed, cold and wet, from Alfavatn to Hvangill. We were not sure if we were on the correct trail, or just some side trail to a local viewpoint until I got my GPS out. Consistent trail markings, or at least a label on the first few trail markers, would have been reassuring. In general, however, the trail is well marked. We were briefly lost once when we went off trail to find a safer path around a snowfield and had to use a compass to decide which way to go when we found the markers again.

AllTrails sucks!

I hiked with a phone and a tablet, and both of them had the local area maps downloaded to AllTrails. This meant I only needed a GPS signal to pinpoint my location on the digital map. AllTrails marked the location of the trail accurately but the topography around the trail was often wildly inaccurate. It shows contour lines crossing the shores of Lake Alftavatn and a river crossing the summit of a mountain in Thorsmork.

Note the contours around Alftavatn. In the east, the lakeshore crosses the 560m contour, but the western shore is 620 m above sea level. A smaller lake seems to lie on the side of a steep slope.	This is a nice circular hike from Volcano Huts at Husadar, but it is the footpath, not the River Krossa, that goes over the top of the hill.

Emstrur is by far the nicest campsite.

After a fairly easy but relatively boring day of hiking over lava fields, the trail suddenly descends into a sheltered valley beneath a glacier. The Emstrur campsite lies in a small meadow with a stream. It is worth arriving here early, to grab one of the most sheltered sites, and to allow time for about a 2 hr pack-free circular hike around the local canyon.

Most of the hike is remote and untouched, but the huts are accessible by 4WD vehicles.

The huts have roads to them for resupply, but in most places, they are not very obvious and hardly more than cart tracks. However, this does mean that you can have your food and luggage transferred between huts. We met a group being guided by Einar Sveinn Westlund of Feast in the Wild who were enjoying fresh salmon and barbecued lamb!

Sometimes the rivers cannot be crossed.

Even in late August, sometimes the river crossings can become impassable. The day we arrived in Thorsmork there was no bus service to Reykjavik from the Volcano Huts because buses could not ford the Krossa River. If you wanted to go back to Reykjavik you had to hike about 20 minutes to the moveable pedestrian bridges at Langidular. The following day, buses were stopping at the Volcano Huts but the bridge at Langidular was damaged and there was no way to walk from one side of the river to the other.

The river crossing about an hour north of Thorsmork was quite difficult and my companion fell in. Ensure that your watch, wallet, documents and electronics are in a waterproof container before you start. Have a towel and change of clothing handy.

The south end of the trail is in the middle of nowhere.

The Laugavegur trail ends abruptly at a trail junction, roughly halfway between the Volcano and Langidalur Huts. If you are heading to the Volcano Hut you can take a shortcut and leave the trail a bit early and go directly to the hut for a cold beer or a warm shower!

Thorsmork is an area, not a village or town.

There are only three sets of buildings in Thorsmork. The largest is the Volcano Huts complex at Husadalur. This includes regular huts, some private cabins, permanent tents, a campground, a restaurant, a campers kitchen and a small sauna. It also has WiFi. The bus to Reykjavik leaves from here every day at about 4 pm. There is also the Langidalur hut on the north side of the Krossa River, and the Basar huts on the south side. If you plan to hike to Skogar, the Basar huts are 6 km closer to your destination than the Volcano huts, and they are on the correct side of the river.

Think twice before doing the Fimmvörðuháls hike to Skogar.

Some of the websites suggest that it is easy to continue the hike to Skogar either as one long day or staying in a hut at the top. (Some websites talk about camping, but we met an Icelandic guide who said there was no way he would ever camp at the top of the pass, between two glaciers.) This is a long (25 km, 1,500m of ascent) hike, even starting from the Basar hut. We hoped to feel fit and enthusiastic after completing the Laugevagur hike, but in fact, we were worn out! If you are only planning to do the Fimmvörðuháls (Skogar-Thorsmork) hike the best route is from the south (Shogar) to north (Thorsmork) as this gives you the best views of the waterfalls on the south side of the trail.

There are a couple of great day hikes in Thorsmork.

AllTrails shows an 18km trail from Húsadalur – Langidalur – Tindfjöll – Svínatungur – Rjúpnafell- Valahnúkur and back (https://www.alltrails.com/explore/trail/iceland/southern/husadalur-thorsmork-langidalur-tindfjoll-svinatungur-rjupnafell-valahnukur) . The climb up Rjúpnafell is optional, and the trail can be divided up into one hike up Valahnúkur with an optional loop west to Eggiar and a second hike to Langidalur around Tindfjöll and back.

The bus back from Thorsmork is fun, from Skogar, not so much.

Reykjavik Excursions use four-wheel drive off-road buses from Thorsmork to Hvolsvollur, where you can grab a coffee and a snack, or visit the washroom, before heading back to Reykjavik in a normal Reykjavik Excursions bus. They also operate a bus from Skogar to Hvolsvollur but it arrives 5 or 6 hours before their connecting bus to Reykjavik. There is a regular public bus from Skogar to Reykjavik which leaves about 4 pm. You have to change in Selfoss and again in Mjodd, a suburban shopping centre 8km from downtown.

Overall it was a very good hike. We completed the Laugavegur trail without ever getting seriously lost, with no injuries or blisters. We had hoped to continue to Skogar, but as the trail was more difficult, and the weather was worse than we expected, we were wise to substitute a couple of good day hikes in Thorsmork. It was a relaxing end to the trip.

If you could guarantee decent weather it would be a great beginner backpacking trip, but that is not possible in Iceland. If you do not have expedition-level equipment and experience, I would only recommend the trip if you could book huts for every night.

Happy Trails!