Day 12 - Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls because Ice, Ice Baby

I swear, in my mind the title makes perfect sense.

Today's trip lead me from Hof (or more precisely Hnappavellir) to Hella and along the line, there were some things to see.

As a little heads up, most are waterfalls again but at one of the stop I got more than I hoped for. Actually it was the first stop where I got to see Svartifoss. It would be unremarkable if it weren't for the edge the water was going over.

Tourist for scale

During a period of volcanic activity, the forces at work produced hexagonal basalt columns (similar to the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland). With the overhang and the distinctly visible columns, people have compared this formation to organ pipes. And I have to say, they have a point.

As the hike to this was marked as 90 minutes round-trip and the info board at the beginning of the path had informed me, that an additional hour, maybe 90 minutes would give me a wonderful view of the Skatafelljökull (Skatafell Glacier Tongue), I decided to go on and boy was I in for a view.

I couldn't find any official measures online, but judging by Google Maps, this glacier tongue measures 10km from the division you can see between the ice streams and the edge, just outside the right frame of the photo.

This is one of the glacier outlets (glacier tongues) of Vatnajökull, which is absolutely massive.

To give a description (unfortunately, photographing a white glacier against a white cloud cover is near impossible, and I failed spectacularly) you can take a picture of Skeiðarárjökull (one of the most massive outlet glaciers) and then turn 240° clockwise to catch a view of massive areas of ice, behind a mountain wall, holding back Vatnajökull.

After walking back to the parking lot, it was time to get on to the next destination, Skogarfoss. It's quite a powerful waterfall at a hight of 60 meters and a width of 15 or 25 meters (Wikipedia is contradicting itself within the same article, however I will go with the more impressive number, obviously).

It is quite amazing how close you can get to the splash zone, at the bottom of the water fall, as you can walk right up to the little pool where the water keeps falling into. The closest I dared to take a picture was about 15 meters away from the edge of the pool (I obviously went right up to the edge and basicly got preassure washed)

And for the closest thing I can offer to a first-hand experience:

After this it was time to put the car AC on full (just to get the air dry, not to cool down anything) and move on, to yet another waterfall, this time the Seljalandsfoss. I had planned some other activities as well but at that time it was raining quite heavily and a strong wind was blowing, so not the perfect day to go to a beach.

With waterfalls, you get wet anyway so I stuck with the plan to add this next one to my "things I've seen" list. As it turned out, this was a great idea. While Seljalandsfoss is not as wide as Skogarfoss, it still measures an impressive 60 meters in hight. But the "main feature" of this waterfall is, that you can go behind it.

But first some front view

To be honest, the side view is a bit more spectacular, as behind the waterfall there is not place to make a good picture without a fish-eye lense.

Not having a fish-eye lense (in fact not having a camera with exchangable lenses), doesn't however prevent me from sharing the experience differently.

About halfway through the video, the lens catches too many water drops and the auto focus just has no chance to do anything meaningful.

All together this was a quite intense and wet day.

Just before driving on to the hotel, the sun decided to make a short appearance.