lake, Lark on the Move

As usual, the weather was looking uncertain on one of the days we had designated for hiking. One of Olivia’s friends came over to hang out in the morning, and we were hoping that with a slow start to the day, we’d be able to get a better read on the forecast and would make our final decision at the last minute. Well. Olivia’s friend came and went, and we still couldn’t figure out if it was supposed to rain or not. We checked a few sources, and none of them matched up. One looked like it was projecting rain where we were going? But another one said that there was a very low chance of rain. We decided to go with the more favorable forecast. Why not? Worst case we’d get rained on, and it’s not like that was anything new.

Part of our eagerness to give it a go was because Olivia had been looking at photos from the hike, and it looked spectacular. We were running out of possible hiking days, and we both agreed that it was as good a day as any. Rain is always a possibility.

The hike is called Reed Lakes, and it’s near Palmer which is where the State Fair is. We drove past the fairgrounds and up into the mountains without any instances of rain… good sign, but also, the forecasted rain didn’t start looking bad until more like 4PM (we started hiking around 2). We held onto our optimism that we’d be okay.

Get ready for another post full of me remarking about “THE COLORS! THE COLORS!”

Even from the parking lot, we could tell it was going to be worth it. It looked like the leaves were already starting to change up there, like fall was in full swing. It was crazy how different it looked from Anchorage, only an hour and half away. The mountains towered over us, and the colors were insane… reds and oranges and yellows and browns, plus plenty of green still. Olivia was trying to take pictures out of the window while we were driving, but she said nothing did it justice. That was kind of the vibe for the entire hike. I took SO many pictures, and I don’t think any of them are sufficient to show how incredible it was out there.

I couldn’t get enough… and hopefully you feel the same way because there’s a lot more where this came from.

The beginning of the hike is fairly flat, and it’s on a nice, gravel path that winds through the valley alongside the river. Then, there’s a turnoff point, and that’s when the uphill and the Lara-and-Olivia-losing-the-trail begin. I’m not exactly sure why we are so bad at following trails, but I’m going to say that the blame is shared between 1. The trails: because they aren’t actually marked, 2. Our trail apps: because they’re never quite right, and 3. Olivia and me: because honestly, we’d probably get off course regardless because we’re way too busy chatting away to pay attention to something as silly as navigation.

Then, this trail has a couple of additional navigation-complicating factors. There are rock scrambles (climbing over large rocks) which makes it much harder for a followable path to get worn down (stone is slightly more durable than grass). When there is grass, there are little cow paths running here there and everywhere (I don’t know if they’re really called that, and they’re definitely not formed by cows… but you know what I mean), so who knows which one is considered the official “trail”. We didn’t stand a chance.

If only the whole thing was like this, we couldn’t have gotten lost if we’d tried.

And besides the colors, how about those mountains??

Scrambling. I’m pretty sure we were lost when this picture was taken…

This is one of the lamest photos I took on this hike… and come on. IT’S SPECTACULAR.

Okay, so yes, I made Olivia re-walk up this rock because I decided it would be a cool picture… but it turned out pretty well, right?

One positive about the weather forecast was that it probably scared some other people away. We saw more people on this hike than on any of the others, but that meant maybe 7 or 8 other groups over nearly 10 miles. And all of them were leaving as we were hiking in. That’s always very reassuring, especially when there’s rain in the forecast. (You’re thinking, “Are we the only idiots who didn’t decide to get an early start to avoid the weather?” and the people you’re passing are probably thinking, “These idiots are going to get soaked.”)

GUESS WHAT? We finally saw some animals!!! No bears (somewhat to my dismay… I’m not crazy, though. I was hoping for a distance bear-sighting. Like across a river or on the opposite side of a valley. But alas, we didn’t even get that). These animals were much smaller and less potentially threatening. One marmot and a few prairie dogs. They were all very cute. Some people who wrote reviews of the trail said to watch your stuff if you put it down because marmots might come for your food. Ha! They look a lot like groundhogs. So did the prairie dogs, actually. And they all make various squeaking noises. As you might imagine, this made them incredibly intimidating (not! They were adorable!).

Excuse the incredibly pixelated picture… but look! It’s a marmot!!!

Can you spy our little marmot friend in this picture? He’s pretty close to smack dab in the center of the photo. If you follow the left edge of the path straight up, through the greenery, he’s right there before you hit the yellow grasses, looking off to the left. Only his head is visible.

These little hills were FULL of prairie dogs (and yes, I’m going to gloss over the existence of that incredibly blue lake at the moment because we’re not talking about the lakes yet… but LOOK AT THAT INCREDIBLY BLUE LAKE!).

All in all, the hike wasn’t too bad. There was definitely some good elevation, but since so much of it was rock scrambling and walking on boulders, it was easier than just hiking uphill. I enjoy that type of terrain because it makes things a little more interesting and distracts you from the fact that you’re also going up. And we only got REALLY off course once when we realized we were on the complete wrong side of the river and had to innovate a river crossing. Not our worst, though!

Here’s Olivia, course correcting after we inexplicably ended up on the wrong side of the river.

Just going to sprinkle this in here because I’m pretty sure I have three of nearly the exact same picture, and I can’t make myself exclude a single one.

The entire time, we were commenting on how insanely beautiful our surroundings were. I had that feeling I always get when I’m in a setting like that… like it’s so beautiful that I can’t even stand it. My heart aches out of an almost longing? Or a desperate feeling that I need to find a way to preserve it or store it so that I can keep it with me forever. I want to bottle it up and take it with me. I don’t know how else to explain it. The same thing happens to me a LOT in the fall when the leaves are changing. I mentioned something to Olivia, and she said that sometimes when things are so beautiful, she gets almost angry. That sounds insane, but I can relate… for me, there’s a part of me that’s mad that I can’t always see it and that it won’t always be the same.

Does this not make you downright furious???

Me with another lake that we’re ignoring for the moment.

You may have guessed from the name of the hike that we got to see some lakes as well. There’s one major lake along the way (SO PRETTY), and the trail ends at another one nestled in the mountains. As you approach the end, it feels like you aren’t even close, like you’ll be hiking endlessly because there’s no final destination in sight… then, you go over a ridge, and BAM! A huge, beautiful lake comes into view.

I love hikes like that, where you really can’t get a good handle on where you’re headed until you’re there. Most hikes are straightforward. Like if you’re hiking to the peak of a mountain, you can usually pause along the way and see the view unfolding as you ascend. But with a hike with a hidden lake or waterfall or a view over a mountain or something similar, there’s no going partway and feeling like that was enough. You don’t even have an inkling of what awaits until the moment of the big reveal. Then, you turn that corner or crest that ridge, and for a moment, it’s like the world stops. “How could that have been RIGHT THERE all this time?” you think. It feels like you’re being let in on a secret.

Eventually, it’s time to go. As you walk away, it’s like you’re walking through a portal back to the normal world. The curtains close behind you, and the lake is gone without a trace.

Our first view of the lake along the route.

I wondered, “Is this lake just as pretty from every angle?”

AND THE ANSWER IS YES. I mean, are you kidding with this? HOW IS THIS REAL?

And then THIS is the final lake. I’m telling you, 50 steps away from this lake, you can’t see squat.

Look at the water! I said at the time that I wanted to swim in it, but on second thought, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of prehistoric dinosaur fish lurking in the depths… so maybe not.

But then, the water is SO clear that you’d probably be able to see any monsters, right? Sure, just in time for them to EAT you. So again, maybe not. I’ll just look from here.

In general, I can’t get over how little justice the photos do to the views. We took SO many pictures, and they look amazing, yet they’re all missing something. I think it’s because a picture can’t convey that feeling of vastness surrounding you and the smallness you feel when you’re in the middle of it. As disappointing as it is to not have the ability to reproduce the beauty completely, at the same time, it’s kind of a gift. It makes it worth visiting a place even when you’ve seen it in pictures. You can show people what you saw, but a part of the experience is kept sacred, shared only between you and the other people who have been there. That’s kind of beautiful, I think.

The photos are still pretty darn spectacular, though.

You’re not tired of looking at these pictures yet, are you?

I sure hope not because we’re not done yet!

We ended up getting insanely lucky with the weather. We got rained on a little, but I think it was the least of any of our big hike days. It was never very heavy, and it didn’t last very long. Thank goodness for that because we realized this would have been one of the worst hikes to do in the rain. Between the walking on rocks and the already muddy trail, we didn’t need any more slip factors entering the equation.

Headed out… this is actually one part of the trail where we took the same route there and back, but that’s because it’s pretty clearly marked for being a trail with no trail markers… That is literally a mud trail across the rocks.

Here’s the map of our hike. We started and ended on the right side of this picture. You can see that our navigation got a little dicey there in the middle (the thickness of the line in that section shows we definitely did NOT take the same route there and back, and the little point up near that small lake is where we realized we were on the wrong side of the river… oops). And then, of course, you can see the two lakes that I took the most pictures of.

In the end, the hike was about 9.8 miles long (15.8 km) with 2,100 ft of elevation (650 m). Supposedly, according to the trail guides, it’s an 8.6 mile hike, but that’s apparently not what we did. I can’t imagine we added a full mile with our wanderings, though. That would be crazy. The most sensible conclusion is that the guides are wrong.

ANYWAY. Needless to say, we were drained but happy when we got back to the car. We had about an hour and a half drive back to Anchorage, and Olivia’s mom was once again the hero of the night. We got back to the house around 9, and dinner was waiting for us. Moms are the best.

At the beginning of our trip, if you’d asked Tony what one thing he was most excited to see, he would have said, without a moment of hesitation, Diamond Beach. The interesting thing about his obsession was the fact that he didn’t seem to know much about it. Mike and I asked why it’s called Diamond Beach, and his response was “because it’s beautiful. Like a diamond.” Thanks, Tony. So, off we went to Diamond Beach, knowing nothing more about it than its name… which Tony insisted on repeating over and over and over until I was ready to throw him out of the car, and Mike banned him from mentioning it again until we got there (under the threat that if he heard the words “Diamond Beach” one more time, we were turning around and going back to Reykjavik. Tony wisely kept his mouth shut after that).

We got on the road after a brief stop at a waterfall near our campsite, Systrafoss, located in the forest of Kirkjubæjarklaustur. It wasn’t much more than a trickle when we were there, and I probably could have skipped telling you about it, but then I wouldn’t have gotten to type Kirkjubæjarklaustur and given you another opportunity to appreciate the names of Iceland.

Next stop, DIAMOND BEACH! The mystery of the name was solved pretty quickly once we got there. It’s a black sand beach, and thanks to the nearby glacier lake, it’s covered with glacier pieces that wash up on the beach after drifting out to sea. There are pieces of all different sizes, and many of them form abstract ice sculptures that sparkle in the sunlight as they melt. We had fun imagining what the different pieces looked like (it’s like cloud animals, glacier edition) and taking ridiculous pictures with them.

Okay, so maybe “trickle” was a bit of a down-sell, but compared to most of the other waterfalls we saw, this IS a trickle!

Diamonds! And you can see the other side of the beach across the outlet from the glacier lake

Ice sculpture! I think this one looks like a baby ice dragon.

Ice hat. There was a hole all the way through.

I have to give Mike the credit for this picture… He was so committed that he practically lay down on the ground for it. This one looks like maybe a dragon or maybe a pegasus.

Some of the coolest ice I’ve ever seen (hehe get it?)

When Tony was satisfied with his Diamond Beach experience, we walked upstream to the glacier lake, Jökulsárlón. It was very pretty. I’m not sure what else to say about it, but it’s a lake… full of ice. And there’s a part that runs out to the sea, giving the future beach diamonds a way out. When we were finished staring at the lake, we paused to watch some little ice pieces that were trying to make a run for the freedom of the sea but were blocked by larger ones. We were completely sucked in by the action and cheered for one little ice as it struggled to break free. I imagine this is what Icelanders did in their free time pre-television. Maybe it’s also like the Icelandic equivalent of horseraces (but MUCH slower). You can put your money on an ice chunk, and whichever one successfully reaches the ocean first, wins. I’m a genius.

The glacier escape route (looking towards the glacier lake)

Walking up to the lake. This was the location of the big roadblock that the little ice pieces had to make it past in order to reach the ocean.

The classic Mike-drinks-freezing-cold-water picture

Before we got back on the road, we decided to check out the other side of Diamond Beach too (on the other side of the outlet coming from the lake) because, despite Tony having no idea what he was talking about, he was right about it being beautiful.

My expression for basically the entire Diamond Beach adventure

I love that you can see the waves crashing into the ice

Seriously… can you believe this is real? It’s like a precious gemstone… a MASSIVE precious gemstone

Diamond Beach was as far east as we were going, so when we finished there, we started back in the direction of Reykjavik. There were a few places we wanted to stop at on the way back, but we were also scouring google maps as we drove to see if there were other things nearby that might be worth checking out. One such discovery was Svínafellsjökull, another stick-out part of a much bigger glacier. The glacier that it’s a part of is called Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Iceland. I quickly decided that visiting Svínafellsjökull was worth the detour x100000. We hiked up a ridge along the side, and it was breathtaking. I would have been happy to hike way farther than we did, but Mike and Tony were keen to keep moving. We walked until we were past all of the other people, at least, before turning around. Even with just that quick stop, it’s probably one of my favorite things we saw.

Svínafellsjökull! Pretty sure the first words out of my mouth were, “You have GOT to be kidding me.”

Little speck Lara and speck Tony with ginormous Svínafellsjökull

I know, you’ve seen enough… but come on. This is crazy!!!

This picture is pretty funny. Can you find Mike? Can you find me?

Our next planned stop was Vatnajökulsþjóðgarður, or Vatnajökull National Park. Mike and Tony were hoping to do some of the hikes there, but unfortunately, our visit wasn’t timed very well for hiking season. Most of the trails were closed for the season with an opening date of May 1, and we were there in mid-April (now you can see how far behind I am… oops). That was a bummer, but at least we could still hike to Svartifoss, another famous waterfall. This one has hexagonal troll rocks like the ones we saw at Reynisfjara beach, but at Svartifoss, they’re mostly hanging down instead of coming up from the ground.

Our classic Iceland lunch – PB (&J for Mike) with the most hideous backdrop

Smiling because the weather was warm enough (for about 5 minutes) to wear short sleeves.

Check out those troll rocks! Maybe they’re hanging here because they’re troll bats that forgot to retreat into their caves before the sun came up.

It was actually (kind of) hot out, so I took off my top layer of pants and was left with these leggings. Mike made fun of me because he said my outfit was ridiculous. I think I look fantastic. Check out that color coordination!

We made one more unplanned stop on our way to the campground for the night. This was another “there are lots of people over there so maybe we should see what they’re looking at” moment. Well, it was clear what they were looking at: a couple of massive, mangled steel girders. What wasn’t immediately clear was why they were there and what was so interesting about them.

Remember how I talked about how there are volcanoes under the glaciers? There are also some sub-glacial lakes that are maintained by the volcanic heat. One such lake, Grímsvötn, is beneath the glacier Vatnajökull. It cycles between slowly filling and eventually releasing the water in a mega-flood. In 1996, there was a volcanic eruption that accelerated the fill cycle, melting 0.75 mi³ (3 km³) of ice in just 13 days. The lake was filled higher than ever before in recorded history, and the resulting mega-flood was incredibly destructive. The flood waters carried glacier pieces along with them, some weighing as much as 1000-2000 tons. TONS!

The mangled steel girders that we were looking at used to be part of a bridge that clearly didn’t fare so well, despite being designed to withstand mega-floods. It had deep foundations and allowed about 6m clearance for glacier pieces to pass underneath, but in this instance, it would have needed more than twice that height to be safe. The result? Well, the beams speak for themselves…

That is NOT a small or weak beam. Imagine the force that was needed to do this! And it was all natural! Crazy, amazing, and a little terrifying

We made our way to that night’s campground, set up the tent, and played card games before falling asleep. Mike and Tony were hoping to do a long, waterfall-filled hike the next day, so we needed all the sleep we could get!

Petrified Trolls of Iceland – Do you like the funky “troll” rocks around Svartifoss? Do you have no idea what I’m talking about? Learn more about the formation of these interesting lava rocks.

Perito Moreno Glacier – if you’re a glacier fan, join us for a trek on this South American glacier!

Ada Foah – compare the black sand beaches of Iceland to the picturesque and slightly more tropical beaches of Ghana.

Reed Lakes Hike

Diamond Beach and Glaciers Galore

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