Iceland Sea to Nowhere
7/11/15

The alarm went off at 6am, and as I sat in my sleeping bag eating breakfast, it started raining.

Motivation was already a struggle for the new-new route and this was the final blow. In addition to everything I mentioned yesterday, the weather forecast for the next week is terrible. Lots of rain. Especially for Landmannalaugar during the time we are scheduled to get there. That is supposed to be the crown jewel of hiking in Iceland, and I don’t want to go through it in a cloud and not see anything.

Oh, and there was lots of fear mongering going on about the last section of our route being “impassable”, but I never got a concrete reason why, just a vague “there’s too much snow”. I know from PCT 2011 to not believe rumors, that you have to go see for yourself what conditions are at the moment when you are there, and make the judgement call for yourself. So, I wasn’t actually scared off by the reports of snow, but it does really wear on you to be constantly told what you are about to do is impossible.

Excuses, excuses. There are so many factors that went into this decision, but what it boils down to is that my heart is just not in this hike anymore.

We took a bus back to Reykjavik today and I moved up my flight home. I think Iceland is beautiful and I still want to do a long hike through it, but it will have to wait for another time.  Feeling pretty down about the whole thing.