Eric and the girl in the red trousers had already left the campsite by the time we got out of the tent. But even we made a much earlier start than normal, knowing that if we were to reach even halfway over the Fimmvörðduháls, we would have to set off before eleven thirty. The first half of this short trail was thirteen kilometres of uphill slog along a path that is renowned for weather changes and mist rising without warning. Paddy Dillon, the master of underestimation, describes this path as ‘steep and rugged climbing with narrow, exposed ridges. Snow and ice on the highest parts.’ But we weren’t ready to end the trail and catch the bus. The path had already started to strengthen its hold. Just one more hill; just one more valley. Moth adjusted the pack on his back and spied on the hills ahead with his monocular. Be careful on the stairs.
Above the birch line the path returned to the landscape we had come to recognize. Rough stony tracks followed narrow ridgelines and broad plateaus to a mountainside that we’d spotted from the tent. Even from there we were able to see the brown line of a path crossing the flank. What we hadn’t been able to make out was that the gently inclining thirty-degree track actually crossed a seventy-degree hillside of gravel, grit and mud. The Þórsmörk valley stretched away as snow-clad mountain tops began to reappear and finally another broad plateau. All sight of the vegetation in the valley bottom disappeared and we were back in the savage, rock-strewn landscape of ash, boulders and obsidian. And above us, the summit of one of the most disruptive volcanic explosions of recent years.
In 2010 Eyjafjallajökull erupted, spewing out an ash plume that rose five and a half miles into the air, shutting down most of the air traffic across Europe. But it wasn’t just the ash that caused the problems. The eruption was beneath a glacier and as the glacier melted, the water poured back into the crater causing the lava to cool really quickly, forming glass crystals in the ash cloud. Bad for jet engines and horrid to walk on. In the tourist shops of the capital, walls are lined with photographs of the eruption. Dramatic pictures capturing red-hot lava as it was ejected from the mountainside. Photographs of heat, ash and disruption. But the one picture that held me transfixed was of the ponies. The farmers had evacuated the area as the volcano began to erupt, escaping from the danger zones. But as they left, they remembered the horses trapped on the hillside, so turned back to find them. The picture is of a herd of ponies running down the road and behind them a dark and furious ash cloud chasing them at high speed.
What the picture doesn’t show are the farmers behind the ponies, guiding them down the road to safety as they ran to safety themselves. The dramatic crisis of a volcanic eruption, a blast of raw, instant power, bringing the human and animal worlds together to face the same threat, the same possibility of extinction. Seismic activity had begun in 2009, allowing the inhabitants of the area nearly a year to prepare, and yet it wasn’t until the lava was running down the hillside that people finally reacted. Mainly for economic reasons, they refused to acknowledge what they knew was coming. The much bigger volcano, Katla, is heating up. History says it usually erupts in the years following an Eyjafjallajökull eruption and information boards about it litter the hillsides. Plastic-coated signs that normally describe local birdlife now instruct people to get to high ground when they hear a warning siren, away from the predicted lava-flow channels. And yet undoubtedly people will still be walking on these hills as the ground is shaking and the water heating up, unable to admit that danger is imminent until it’s visible.
I watched my feet finding their way through the ash and rock and my thoughts drifted back to the farm in Cornwall, to the dust-dry fields and bare hedges of our first visit. No insect life other than the flies that hatched in the window frames, or birdlife other than the crows waiting for the sparse growth of apples to fall. A crisis unfolding, but invisible to most as they drove to the supermarket. The immense form of Katla looms unseen to the east. The horses will be running, the birds will have flown and the insects will lie dead on the ground, but the volcano will have erupted before humans look up and say, ‘Maybe the signs were there, but we walked on the hills anyway.’
A via ferrata awaited us. A precipitous path traversing a near-vertical hillside of loose, shifting rock: a scree run, in fact, at a few thousand feet, crossed by this narrow track with a chain attached to steel pegs hammered into the rock for the walker to hold on to. Moth’s head for heights disappeared one day in his forties when he fell through the barn roof. Especially exposed heights where he can see directly to the bottom of the valley. Dave and Julie inched their way across, keeping their eyes fixed on the chain. But Moth was looking the other way.
‘Just give me a minute.’
‘There’s no other way around, it’s too steep. We have to cross here.’
‘I know, I know, just give me a minute.’
We stood on a narrow ridge between the plateau and the scree run while he tried to breathe. Views of mountains stretched out to either side, but ahead only the sheer mountainside and a path that had to be crossed.
‘All right, mate, your turn, but don’t trust the chain, we’re just fixing it.’ Three men in high-vis jackets were looking in a bucket of long steel bolts. Talking to each other in broad north of England accents.
‘What are you doing up here? You’re clearly not Icelandic!’
‘No, obviously. I’m from Doncaster. I normally work in Scotland, the Lake District, Northumberland, you know, round the north. But this job came up and I thought, why not, can’t be that different to home. Didn’t think I’d be on the side of a volcano for a week though. Bloody cold up here. Right, get across then, but like I say, don’t rely on the chain; we’ve just taken some pegs out. Off you go.’
Moth took a deep breath; his pale waxy complexion had fear written across it in capital letters, but he knew he was going to cross anyway. He kept his back to the northerner, so the man didn’t see his hands shaking, and stepped out on to the loose ground. The same man who had stood at the bottom of the scree run in the Lake District, arms wide, laughing as I hurled myself down, began to reappear. His shoulders loosened and his back straightened as he stopped momentarily, one hand on the chain and, looking back, beckoned me over, the colour returning to his face. Don’t ‘be careful on the stairs’, run up them. Run up them two at a time if you can, while you can. I followed him, eyes fixed on his back and away from the valley bottom a thousand feet below.
Ash and rock crowned the volcano. An alien landscape of desolation. Sleety hail-filled rain began to fall, loud on waterproof clothing. In a confusing landscape of mounds, dips and soot, Dave and Julie’s red and blue jackets stood out in stark relief. Even the reliable Paddy seemed a little confusing here.
‘I think it’s left of the hill, following the yellow marker posts.’ Moth sat on a rock to examine the map more closely, but quickly got up again, surprised by how warm it was.
‘But we’ve been following the blue markers all the way, it wouldn’t suddenly change.’ The landscape made no sense to me. Maybe something about the magnetism was shifting the compass in my head. How could I possibly doubt Paddy?
‘And I saw some people go the other way round that hill. Maybe Paddy’s wrong, like,’ Dave was gathering his things, preparing to follow them.
Moth looked at us all in exasperation as Julie stayed out of the argument and sat quietly eating a cereal bar; but then she looked up slowly.
‘I thought that was a lake over there and it was just mist rising from it. But there’s no water. It must be the hot top of the volcano. It has to be if these are the two new cones that were formed in the eruption. Check in the book, Moth, these must be Móði and Magni.’ She casually finished eating the cereal bar.
We all looked in the direction she was pointing – to the two cones and the waterless lake of steaming rock beyond.
‘They are.’
‘Well, that’s solved it. I’m not walking across that; it’ll melt my boots, like. Let’s go left.’
We set off, Moth smiling smugly, heading to the left of the Miðsker hill ahead.
The wind picked up, blowing in strong cold gusts from the snowfields all around. Crossing a valley of packed ice, past metal cases housing instruments for measuring seismic activity and more warning signs to head away from the lava flows. I wondered where exactly we would head to. Where can you go when you’re standing on the top of a volcano and all the activity you’ve been warned of finally comes together into one catastrophic moment? Too late then to consider a change of route.
The ice took us into a precarious ravine of melting rivulets and the black bacterial growth. I peed behind a boulder; it froze instantly, leaving a trail of yellow ice. Dehydration. I needed to drink, but although I knew I needed to drink, something about the cold air, or the cold water, meant that again I hadn’t. Ahead was an A-shaped zinc hut, the tiny Baldvinsskáli hut that only sleeps twenty and is recommended for emergency stops only.
‘Paddy says there’s often no water at this hut.’
‘Well, I’ve carried this water filter all the way and haven’t used it, so let’s get it out and fill all our bottles now, then if I have to I’ll come back for more later.’ Dave unwrapped his new filter and slowly filled the four bottles. There wouldn’t be room at the hut for us to stay, but as the light was falling, reflecting pink rays across the ice, we were hoping to camp nearby. I thought about Eric and the girl in the red trousers. Would they be at the hut or, fuelled by oregano, already on the bus to Reykjavík?
Out of the ravine, on the flat area where the hut sat, the wind ripped in, pushing us hard towards the path that led away and down the mountainside. But darkness was coming and we needed to stop: this wasn’t a landscape for a night-hike with a feeble head torch. The leeward side of the hut offered some shelter from the wind, so might be a spot where we could camp.
We opened the door and walked in, instantly hit by a wall of hot, clammy, noodle-flavoured air. A woman with unwashed hair and layers of fleeces emerged from the heat. She was in her late thirties with an open welcoming face.
‘Get in, get in, shut the door.’ Lauri had a commanding presence that anyone would obey without question.
‘Hi, we just wondered if it would be okay to camp outside? There’s no other shelter from the wind.’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
‘No, you can’t camp, the forecast’s too bad. Your tents will blow away. We’re full in the hut. Completely to the rafters.’
‘Well, thanks anyway.’ We opened the door and picked our rucksacks up to head out into the darkness and the iced rain blowing in gusts from the glacier.
‘Where are you going?’
‘If we can’t camp here we’ll have to head down to find some shelter.’
‘No, no. I’m not turning anyone away tonight; it’s a death trap out there. Certainly not you four.’
‘Us four?’
‘Well, you’re not exactly a group of tough twenty-year-olds, are you?’ What exactly was she saying? ‘All the bunks and the spare mattresses are taken, but if you can find some floor you can use it. But close the door.’
Lauri, it transpired, wasn’t a hermit, or a recluse living wild on the hillside, but a mother with a family of young children at school in Reykjavík. For four months every summer she left them with their father and moved on to the volcano to take care of her other children: the people stranded on the mountainside at night, who often only survived because of her diligent care and ethos of ‘no one left outside’.
Beyond the porch in the main part of the hut the heat and noise was an intense assault on senses attuned to the wild landscape outside. Rows of tables, all crowded with people in trekking clothes. Heaps of rucksacks on every available metre of floor space. And a queue of people cooking, waiting to cook or fighting over pans by a small two-ring fixed gas hob.
‘Cook your food if you want to, but no camping gas stoves, on the cooker only – we don’t want to catch fire, we don’t have enough water to put it out.’
‘Where do we sleep? Is there another room?’ I’d never spent a night in a trekking hut and was already feeling myself withdraw. Too many people in such a small space and the familiar sense of panic was rising. I hung back by the door. I couldn’t do this; I’d rather risk the wind on the volcano summit than this. ‘Moth, please don’t make me do this. You sleep in here if you want, but help me put the tent up first. I can’t be in here.’
‘We can’t. The tent will just rip away out there.’
‘I can’t be in here.’ But there was no escape, his hand was on my arm, forcing me towards a chair by a table Dave had cleared.
‘You can, it’ll be fun. You’re not going out there.’
What the fuck was I doing here? My head was pounding, breath catching in my chest as the noise and the room began to pulsate. How could these people think this was okay? It was not okay. I was in the street in Polruan, running to hide behind the chapel, while trapped in a chair unable to escape.
These were a new set of people; we’d encountered very few of them before, most of them had started the trail at Skógar and were heading north to Þórsmörk where they would catch the bus back to Reykjavík. No sign of Eric; the girl in the red trousers must have forced him over the mountain to Skógar as she’d planned. But opposite us were two familiar faces, the obviously related Germans from the Langidalur campsite.
‘So why are you in the hut, why aren’t you camping?’ They were nudging each other again and staring. Why were they so keen that we should camp, were they concerned that there wasn’t enough floor space for four more bodies?
‘It’s blowing a gale out there, like.’
As the water boiled for noodles Julie chatted easily with them in her fluent German, but all the time they were nudging and looking from Moth to myself with broad gnome smiles. I ate noodles that wouldn’t rehydrate because the water wasn’t hot enough and drank lukewarm tea, eyes fixed on the bowl, struggling in an attempt to exclude the wider room. I had to get outside and slipped Moth’s grip with the excuse of going to the toilet hut. Beyond the sleeping hut was a smaller replica A-shaped hut that housed a chemical toilet and a wooden seat. I went inside and bolted the door. The wind rattled the zinc and pushed through in icy draughts, but I was alone. The air was cold, not a voice to be heard, and I sat there until my head stopped spinning and someone was hammering on the door to come in.
Outside the wind blew in strengthening gusts, parting the clouds that had engulfed the volcano. For a moment a deep, dark sky appeared through a tunnel of cloud, a black hole strewn with bright points of starlight. A stillness finally came with the wind blowing at my back and the cold as it puckered my face. I inhaled long slow breaths. This was outside the door; all I had to do was to walk out of the door whenever I needed to and I’d be able to make it through the night.
‘Where have you been? Your tea’s nearly cold.’ Julie handed me a mug. ‘You’ll have to drink it quickly, we’re supposed to move the tables and put the mattresses out before lights out.’
‘Oh wow, like school camp.’
‘Seems so.’
A mad delirium followed of bodies, tables, chairs and rucksacks. A scene that could have been accompanied by the theme tune to a Benny Hill sketch show. I didn’t wait for my mat to inflate but threw it down in the corner and claimed my space at the edge. Moth squeezed in next to me with the last of the foam hut mattresses.
‘You’ll be okay; I’m between you and everyone else. Face the wall and it’ll be as if it’s just us.’
But that was always going to be impossible in a room full of people, few of which spoke the other’s language, when one of them, a young man with dark hair, was frantically rushing round the room, throwing the rucksacks about and looking among the pans.
‘It’s lost, it’s lost.’
‘What’s lost?’
‘A black zip bag. It has my important night things in it.’
More madness, as the whole room got out of their sleeping bags and began to search for the important bag, obviously containing his valuables and medication. I stayed in the corner, afraid of losing my spot. But the bag couldn’t be found. The two Germans didn’t get involved, but sat on their beds, occasionally looking to my corner and smiling their knowing smiles. I looked the other way.
‘What exactly is in it? Will you need a doctor?’ Lauri was in the doorway, hands on hips, and the room fell silent.
‘My important night things.’
‘Medicine?’
‘No, my things.’ The young man’s voice was rising to a quaver of panic, but Lauri was swelling with exasperation.
‘Just tell me what things.’
The whole room turned to him in expectation of a life-threatening revelation.
‘My toothbrush.’
The exasperated room got back into their sleeping bags as Lauri turned the lights out.
‘Goodnight, children, and no one gets up until six.’
I got up. In the darkness of the early hours I crept over the bodies, picked up a coat and went outside. The wind had dropped to a whisper and on the far eastern horizon a slither of pink wove between the dark grey gaps in the clouds, lighting the glacier tops in hints of faintest blue. The silence was total. The complete silence of an earth at its beginning. Or its end. Even in the warmth of a stranger’s parka, I felt this was no place for human or animal and yet the world went on without either. The pink light spread through the grey, not time passing, just light changing.