The Fimmvorduhals Trail in southwest Iceland is one of the most impossibly beautiful day hikes in the world. This challenging hike crosses volcanic ash fields, snow, and ice as it passes dozens of waterfalls, several glaciers, and several volcanoes. Throughout, the scenery is incredible as you wind through the valleys of Thorsmork and the banks of the Skoga River. It's also an adventure, with 25 km (15 mi) of hiking and ~3300 feet of elevation gain across trails that are at times difficult to follow and quite rugged.
Fimmvorduhals (which means "five cairns": there are old cairns that mark the trail in spots) is 15 miles one-way, so if you want to do this as a day hike, you'll have to figure out a way to get from one end to the other. One end is at the Basar huts in Thorsmork, and the other is at Skogafoss, a popular waterfall on the Ring Road in the tiny town of Skogar. While Skogar is easy to reach by any car, a 4-wheel drive high clearance vehicle is necessary to get to Thorsmork. Iceland's interior roads - called the F roads - are unpaved, rough, and cross flowing rivers. They're not usable by ordinary passenger cars. I was there in July and used Sterna Travel's buses. I was able to buy a one-day pass good for any of their buses. An ordinary bus picked me up at the Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik, and I switched to this one to get into Thorsmork:
That's a 4WD, off-road bus that can easily drive over the rough roads and unbridged rivers into the mountainous interior of the island. I hiked the trail from north to south, starting in Thorsmork and ending in Skogar. Either direction seems like it would be equally amazing, but the last bus left Skogar several hours later, so I'd have more time going the direction I did. The start of the trail in the Basar area of Thorsmork:
I would be carefully keeping track of my time. I knew when the last bus left my starting point, and could turn around if the weather was dire or I couldn't find the way forward. Or, for that matter, if I didn't think I'd make it to Skogar in time.
The first part of the trail makes a long ascent out of Thorsmork, a maze of mountains and valleys whose name means "valley of Thor". There are a lot of amazing views on the way up:
Here you can see the precarious nature of some of this trail as it snakes along a hillside:
Another narrow spot. As you ascend up towards the pass, you begin to see glaciers off in the distance.
The trail is never boring. Here, again, is a long, narrow, steep section:
The black and green landscape of Thorsmork:
A glacier tongue making its way out of the mountains:
This may be one the namesake five cairns. I'm not sure, because there were actually 7 or 8 such cairns. The path levels out briefly here, then continues to ascend. The ascent isn't terribly steep, but goes on for quite a while. Regardless of which direction you hike the trail, you're going to go way uphill for the first half and way downhill for the second half.
A narrow portion of the trail called the "cat's spine". It's one of the many places that make you look twice and say "that's the trail?"
Glaciers have carved this valley into an interesting shape:
The trail is getting more rugged, and the landscape is changing to volcanic ash. Though I'm not there yet, this trail passes right by Eyjafjallajokull, the volcano that erupted in 2010 causing flight problems all over Europe.
Up in the mountain pass and still ascending. There is a fair amount of snow on the ground, even though I hiked this in mid-July.Note the black and red volcanic ash blanketing everything. Besides Eyjafjallajokull, there are several other new volcanoes in this area caused by its eruption called Magni and Modi.
The snow in the highest part of the hike makes for the most difficult route finding. There are tall, brightly colored rods that mark the way (see above picture), the idea being that you can see them despite some snow on the ground, but sometimes they are easy to follow and sometimes they are far enough apart that you have to guess and then backtrack if you were wrong. Be careful in this section of the trail. It is still mostly a straight short from north to south, but if there's a lot of snow it would be difficult to find the trail. Here's a pretty little streamlet (it's only a few inches wide) winding its way through ice that covers part of the trail:
Once past the highest part of the pass, you'll arrive at the hut. You can stay overnight here, and it is at roughly the halfway point and near the highest point of the trail. Whichever direction you're hiking, it's mostly downhill from the hut. Continuing on, the trail flattens out and begins gradually descending. The terrain is less complicated here and not quite as stunning. The day I was there, clouds were rolling across:
The clouds closed in, causing a minor whiteout. It wasn't to difficult to follow the path, but be aware that there is the path AND a 4WD road through this area, and they are near to each other and overlap once or twice, but they aren't the same. Follow the trail markers, which is easier said than done with a cloud shortening your visibility.
Here is the footbridge across the Skoga River:
At this point I was roughly 2/3 of the way through the hike. (Starting in Skogar, of course, you'd be more like 1/3 of the way through.) The path from here is quite easy to follow, and in the extremely unlikely event that you do lose it, you just follow the river downstream until you hit the tourists at Skogafoss.
The section of the trail follows the river and takes you past several dozen waterfalls, all different, all beautiful. Here's one:
This one below was my favorite. The water is channeled into a narrow path and falls down several short chutes before dropping down the main waterfall. It's incredibly powerful, loud, and captivating:
Along this section of the trail, which continues for about five miles, you never know what to expect next. Here's a complex waterfall:
A broad but short couple of falls:
On this part of the trail, you'll start seeing more people who have hiked up from Skogafoss. As the ground becomes grassy again, you'll also see plenty of Iceland's sheep, who I believe are given free range in the summer:
They're pretty indifferent to hikers. And, at the end of the long journey, the fantastic Skogafoss waterfall, dropping down to a black riverbank:
Despite the long uphill start of the hike, I was consistently ahead of my time and was never at risk of missing the 9:00 bus in Skogar. In fact, I arrived there at about 7:00 and ending up eating dinner and then waiting around for quite some time.
One more note on the time: If you have a car parked here or are having someone pick you up, bear in mind that in summer in Iceland it's light all the time. When I was there (mid-July), the sun only set for 3-4 hours each night, and the sky never got dark. Getting stuck in the darkness was absolutely no concern, as I could have hiked the trail at 1:00am and seen everything just fine. I was only on a schedule because the last bus ran by at 9:00pm.
Fimmvorduhals is a wold-class hike and highly recommended!