Northern Lights - nice bonus!

We saw the northern lights for a few minutes last night around midnight when returning back to capital Reykjavik. We were a small group on the way to see the volcanic eruption in southern part of Iceland when we saw it and it was a nice bonus. Now March is over. This is probably the last chance to see the Northern Lights!

New in July 2010 – Vestman Islands!

Mountain Climbing will start offering tours to the Vestman Islands when the new harbour Landeyjahöfn opens in July. Pick-up is at 7am. We drive to Landeyjahöfn where we take the ferry to the Vestman Islands. We drive and walk around the village and visit the volcano that erupted in the 1970s. Some of us might even be interested in some activities, hiking, sailing around the islands (not included in price) or walking on the volcano. During the tour we get information about the eruption and the life on the islands. You get some free time before we head back to Reykjavik just before 7pm.


Price: ISK 98.000 or 565 Euros for up to 6 passengers. Group offers available.
Duration: 12 hours.
These tours start in July 2010.

Evening tours to see the eruption

Mountain Climbing has now started offering evening tours to see the eruption in southern Iceland. Pick-up starts at 8pm. The drive takes ca 4 hours back and forth so the tour all in all will take 5 hours.
Our tours at 9.30am will continue.
This summer Mountain Climbing/Iceland hiking will offer hiking tours to the erupting area to see the new lava. Those tours will take approximately 14-15 hours all in all.

Another Live broadcasting on the web

And this camera has a good angle. Please wait while it is loading.

http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos

The eruption Live

Here you can see the volcanic eruption live:

http://www.mila.is/um-milu/vefmyndavelar/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

Tour to see the eruption

Took a small group to see the eruption in volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland today. Nobody except journalists and policemen are allowed to go near the erupting area but we could see the yellow or orange colour from afar as you can see. Then of course we could see some smoke. It was a very pleasing tour and everybody was very happy.
Mountain Climbing will offer tours to see the eruption every day for as long as people are interested in the tours. Pick-up at 9.30am. Duration 5-7 hours.

Tours to see the eruption in Iceland

Mountain Climbing offers tours to the area where the volcanic eruption is in Iceland. The first tour will take place tomorrow and we will try to go to some spot on the south coast of Iceland where it is possible to see some fire or smoke coming from the volcano.
Pick-up starts at 9.30am. Estimated duration is 5-7 hours. Price is 90 euros per person or ISK 15.000.

Webcamera from the area

The eruption is only small yet. The eruption is in the eastern part of the glacier or volcano and some fire to be seen. Iceland is on GMT so it is almost two in the morning. This is a webcamera that the national broadcasting radion in Iceland has showing this area. Notice that we have night now in Iceland, maybe there is more to be seen tomorrow: http://www.ruv.is/hekla

Live on a website

It might be possible to follow the eruption live on this website, tonight or tomorrow. We will see:

http://www.heklubyggd.is/vedur.htm

Volcanic eruption in Iceland

Volcanic eruption has just started underneath the glacier Eyjafjallajökull in the southern part of Iceland. We have been expecting this eruption for some time now because of earthquakes in the area and now finally it has started.

Evening hikings can start soon

Back from the travel convention in Berlin. The convention was great. This was my first time at a travel convention so I didn't know what to expect but it was very interesting, especially to see the difference between the marketing of all the countries and not least, the hiking/activity companies.
The Icelandic group I was travelling with enjoyed the time and used the evening to go to interesting restaurants. I tasted kangaroo meat for the first time. Delicious!
Now: Business as usual - hikings to Mt. Esja and Mt. Helgafell. We have daylight in the evenings in Iceland now (at around 8pm) so the evening hikings on Mt. Helgafell can start soon.

Picture from Mt Esja in Iceland

Managed to post some photos on Iceland Hiking's/Mountain Climbing's facebook page. Now you can see them here.

This picture is from a hiking on Mt Esja in Reykjavik, Iceland last spring, almost one year ago.

The picture was taken just before I decided to start my company, Mountain Climbing, and offer hiking tours to Mt Esja.

There is not much snow on the mountain as you can see in this picture and it still isn't even though there has been some snow in the southern part of Iceland for the last weeks.

Traffic jams

Iceland is still shaking or part of it with those earth quakes underneath the glacier Eyjafjallajökull. There are 20-30 earth quakes per hour and all of them of smaller magnitude than 3,0 except one that was 3,1. It might stop or it might result in an eruption. No one knows until (or if) it happens. It is exciting.

The people living on a nearby farm will get 20 minutes to flee from their farm if an eruption starts underneath the glacier. They are not worried. Earth quakes and volcanic eruptions are not that uncommon in Iceland.

If something big happens the area will be closed and no traffic allowed. It will not be like when I was 12 and we had an eruption in "nearby" volcano Hekla. My parents drove together with us kids out to the country to see the eruption. All the other families did the same thing. There was a traffic jam on the road to Mt. Hekla.

Changing weather

The weather changes very fast in Iceland. Sometimes when I pick up my customers at the hotels in Reykjavik the weather might be gray and even raining or snowing but it doesn't have to be that way when we start the hiking or stand on the top. At that point it might be quite opposite with clear sky and beautiful view over the surrounding.

This was my customers experience this week. Yesterday we started the hiking in clear weather with beautiful blue sky but when we were standing on top of Mt. Esja we had fog all around us and we couldn't see a thing. But then 30min.-60min. later when we were lower on the mountain we had the fog above us and then we could enjoy the view.

This is Iceland.

Cold weather and earth quakes

The weather has been "bad" in southern part of Iceland for the last few days. We have now been getting the cold weather from Siberia, the weather that Europe has been getting for the whole winter.

Other things have been taking our minds. We have a referendum on Icesave on Saturday.

There are earth quakes more or less all the time in Iceland, most of them only small (magnitude only -3). Today there have been more earth quakes than usual underneath the glacier Eyjafjallajökull so there might be an volcanic eruption coming.

But that's only guessing. Yet.

For the earth quakes - see here:

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/