Month: May 2010

This is our last day in Borgarnes town.  We left from hostel at 8.30 AM and left for our first stop at Eldborg Crater.   This is one of the most complete crater in Iceland that formed from low viscosity magma.  It is mainly built up by layers of scoriacious (dark colored lava rock with lots of large gas bubbles) lava.   Unlike most craters we have seen in the past, this was very steep – more than 150 ft tall from base to the rim, and perfectly symmetric. Nearest parking access was 3 km from this, so it was pretty intense walking through lava fields to get to the crater and hike up to the top of it through steep sides.  It was well worth it.

We were planning to go to Snæfellsjökull National Park on the western peninsula.  However, we were told that it was not built as part of the original itinerary, so the bus driver was not allowed to go that far.  We were disappointed, but were content with what we were able to see in the short number of days we stayed in Iceland.

What a place this is.  The 6 km hike wiped us all out and we spent the reminder of the bus journey half-asleep.  Suddenly the bus slowed down and we woke up to what looked like a toll booth.  After passing through it, we came across the tunnel that goes below the deep fjord.  It was 6 km long tunnel and it was amazing how well kept it was.  Completely dry, clean, and well lit.  Such an engineering feat to have been able to do it.

We started off the day at 8.30 AM and had few exciting stops to make.  Our driver suggested we climb on top of the water tower that is located on a small hill to get a overview of the entire town.  The water tower was designed to provide such access to the tourists – with a staircase leading to the top, and there was a sun clock. I wish we could use water towers in our towns this way – with most of them so tall, it would be an amazing view.  I can’t imagine that happening in the US any time.  From the water tower, we were able to view the tidal inlet, which in this case was a deep valley left behind by the glacier that got flooded by ocean (technically this is called a Fjord), we got to see a lot of glacial features like Roche moutonnée, arêtes, horns, and cirques.  We discussed how some of these features can be used to identify the direction in which the glacier was moving.

As we were driving, we saw beautiful horizontal lava flows that make up most of the hills, and occasionally some dykes that cut across the layers.  One of the dykes was protruding out of the hill and stood out like a wall.  It was too high and too steep of a hill for us to climb, so we just made a roadside stop to take pictures.  As we continued driving, we noticed there were broad stair-step structures on the landscape on either side of the valley.  We believe these are wave-cut terraces indicating coastlines of the past during times of higher sea level.  There were also a lot of geothermal fields that were visible.

The next stop we made was really cool and really unique.  This place is called Hraunfossar and Barnafoss (children’s falls).  There were numerous springs that were exiting out from in between layers of basaltic flows all along the narrow canyon of the river Hvita.  The glacial melt water from highlands enters highly fractured and jointed basaltic rocks and at depth encountered layer of lava with less permeability (ability of rocks to transmit water through them) which causes water to travel horizontally down slope rather than going further deeper into the ground.  Eventually this water exits at the point where the river has cut a canyon, exposing that less permeable layer.  What is amazing is, this is not a spring that we get to see in other places, barely visible flow – it has about 80 cubic meter per second.  This location was also interesting in that it had a thick layer of well stratified sandstone in between basaltic layers, indicating a period when sand was deposited by the rivers flowing in the area and then covered by lava flow that came later.  Good stop for paleo-environmental interpretations.

As we were driving through, we noticed there were lots of greenhouse farms in the area, and so decided to try our luck stopping at one of those farms to learn more about them.  The farmer we met was very nice, though reluctant at first, he explained the whole process.  This farm was particularly for tomatoes and had tomato plants that were taller than 7 feet.  They were growing like a vine, but had a supporting string holding them from the top.  The farmer said they plant tomatoes in February, and the first harvest starts in late April.  These tomatoes produce until late November, and are harvested three days in a week.  The yield was about 38 kg per square meter of the farm.  We were surprised to learn that the seeds and special fertilizers are imported from Holland.  They analyze the chemistry of the soil and water and identify the nutrients that are lacking, so that they can develop fertilizer that is just perfect for tomatoes for this particular farm.  Tomatoes are harvested when they are still green and sent to Reykjavik where it is stored at 14 deg C for four days to turn them to deep red color before selling them at markets.

We moved from the farm and went to visit a crater called Gabrok.  This was 173 meters above sea level and appeared to have been built by several episodes of eruptions based on the fact that multiple craters rings were observed.  From this location, we noticed the spectacular geological features that were visible in all directions.  There were several faults visibly offsetting basaltic layers, dykes that cut across layers of rocks, lava fields of different ages that surround the crater we were standing on, Roche Moutanees with large glacial grooves on top of them, and a meandering river that cuts through glacial sediments on the flat valley bottom.  We used this opportunity to teach students about how to put observations together to reconstruct geological history of the area.  It was one of the best locations for this, and it worked very well because they have seen a lot of geology in the past 10 days and this pulls their experience together in a meaningful way.  What a great experience for them.

The last stop for the day was Deildartunguhver geothermal field, which is one of the largest producing (180 L/second) geothermal field in the world. The temperature of the water that is springing out is more than boiling temperature, so there were warning signs all over reminding us to not touch the water.    They are pumping hot water from here and transport nearly 75 km through pipelines to distant towns and rural areas for heating and other household purposes.  They also generate about 62 MW electricity from this field.  This is just one of the many!!!

Another day in heavens came to an end.

We left Hvoll hostel at 8 AM and headed to our next hostel destination, which is Borgarnes, a small city located along the western fjords.  Students were very interested in the Wool Factory located in Vik, so, we made a stop there.  We also had to pick up few items that were left behind at the hostel in Vik (photo on left) where we stayed last.  Our guide Sveinborg accompanied us until the wool factory and parted her way to Reykjavik.   

We talked our driver into driving us closer to the erupting volcano in order to get a closer view of eruption.  So he took us as far as the bus could go, which in this case was where the road ends on a river bed.  To go beyond, we needed special vehicles that can be driven through several miles of broad and soft river bed.  The view of the eruption was really good.  We took lots of pictures, and collected some ash samples.  Luckily, it started getting cloudy and covered the view of the eruption completely just about the time we were leaving.  We really were lucky to be there at the right time to use the short window of opportunity!

We stopped for lunch at a gas station (fast food, but much better quality than we have in the United States) and continued our journey across Iceland to the western peninsula.  Most of us had opportunity to take short naps through the scenic journey.  We took country side roads through Thingvillier National Park, where it started become very mountainous.  I believe the driver chose to take this route (which is usually closed until summer time) because it is very scenic and has lots of cool geology.  However, when we were about 40 minutes away from our destination, we encountered a debris slide that has come down all the way from atop the slope of the mountains and ran over the road.  It was pretty wide at the point it intersected the road (more than 100 feet) and it appeared to have happened overnight during heavy rain, so it still had lots of mud and debris that were unstable.  This meant, we had to turn around and drive back through different road, which added about an hour and half to our journey.  It was nothing to complain about, but just another great opportunity for us and our students to see the geological forces at work.

We reached the Borgarnes hostel and got checked in.  There was a Pilipino restaurant and bar in town that was highly recommended for us.  We called in and requested them to serve us a buffet, which they agreed to happily.  We enjoyed the food and went to bed, while most of the students went to participate in a local meeting that was related to upcoming election in town.  They said there were live bands after the meeting, and got to interact with college age local folks.  The one thing that was missing in this trip (interaction with locals) so far was rectified at this place.  Both our students and the Icelandic folks really meeting each other.

Will be updated soon…. come back and see.

Will be updated soon…. please come back and see.

We left Vestmanayer Island at 8.15 AM and reached mainland at 11.15 sharp.  Our bus was waiting for us with a new driver.  Our goal was to drive to our next hostel in Vik and see any geologic features along the drive.  Our new drive seem to have good idea as to what the stops were going to be, so we went along.  We ate lunch at a burger shop, and I learnt that hotdogs here are made of lamb meat, and they are delicious.

We visited two different water falls (Selizalandsfoss and Skogafoss) both of which are fed by glacial melt water from the highlands, visited a man-made cave, sea cliffs and sea arch/cave.  It was pretty windy, cold, drizzling, and the sea was very rough.  We braved it all to look at the beautiful columnar basalts, and highly fractured basalt.  We were not able to go see the cave because the tide was high and had cut off the beach at the promontory.  As we were driving, we also came across zones where the volcanic ash was blowing over making it very hard to see anything.  At times, the visibility was reduced to just about 10-20 feet.  We also got to see Icelandic Horses in a small horse farm house.  They are so beautiful.  

Finally we reached our hostel in Vik, and what a beautiful location it was.  Got to see the photos to understand!

 

 

 

View Larger Map

We planned to walk to the northern shores of the Island around the harbor and hike to the top of the Heimaklettur (283m amsl) mountain followed by walk to the south eastern shores of the island where there was supposed to be a lot of pumice washed up from the eruption on mainland.  We started at 9.30 AM, packed sandwiches for us, and eventually walked to the north shore.  From distance, it appeared like it would be impossible to hike to the top of the hill because it had vertical cliff all around it that was at least about 40m tall.  As we got closer, we saw nearly vertical ladders that were chained to the rocks that provided access way.  It was a good hike to the top and not as strenuous as we imagined it would be.  The view from the top was unbelievable and it was also clear blue sky day, lucky us!  As we sat down with our sandwiches, we witnessed the most beautiful ash plume rising above the clouds that were hovering over the ice-sheet where the erupting volcano is located.  We were completely mesmerized with the view and kept watching it as it rose higher and higher and higher.  The high-altitude wind was blowing towards east or south east, so it provided an unobstructed view of the whole ash cloud for us (we were viewing from southwest direction).

The view of the 1973 eruption from the top was awesome.  One can see dark colored lava fields that had no vegetation covering a large part some too close to the line of houses and the harbor entrance.  We learnt that the 1993 lava indeed engulfed some of the houses in that area and that people used sea water to solidify the advancing lava near harbor entrance to stop it from closing off the harbor.  They needed to pump so much water that they imported large capacity pumps from the US and used it here.  The current population of this Island is about 4000. 

After spending an hour or two on top, we climbed down, walked along the shore to different places.  Near the entrance to the harbor, we saw some of the pumice (really light volcanic ash clumps, that float in water) washed ashore and collected them.  It was close to 5pm, so we headed back to the hostel.  A small group went and hiked to the top of Eldfell crater (221m amsl) after dinner.  Tomorrow we have to leave at 7.30 am to catch the ferry back to Þorlákshöfn and take a bus to Vik.  We are hoping to find a place to get closer to the volcano.  We will have a geologist guiding us for the next two days. It should be exciting.

More tomorrow…

We left our Reykjavik hostel at 9 AM and headed toward a small fishing town called Þorlákshöfn located southeast of Reykjavik.  Our driver Thor suggested that we see an exciting site that has red lava layers, so we decided to make a stop there on our way to the Ferry Dock.  That happened to be an exciting site for us – it had really reddish (oxidized or compositional?) and dark grayish lava layers that could have been very well a part of an older eruption cones.  We spent an hour there (Jack couldn’t get enough of it though) and decided we need to leave to catch the ferry.  This site had one of the best display of volcanic bombs and ribbon flow structures that are usually associated with strombolian type volcanic eruption.  Most of us collected some specimen for our desk or mantle or for friends.  We left the town and drove to Þorlákshöfn, which took about 35 minutes.  We reached there with more than an hour of time left for the ferry, which was being washed (of the ash from eruption) at that time. So we stopped at the local gas station and grabbed some snacks and coffee.  We had a surprise birthday party for Brannon Andersen, and as per our request our travel agent in Iceland came there with a large chocolate cake.  Brannon and others enjoyed the cake.

The ferry was pretty large (unlike the ones I have been on in Galapagos) and had many levels with sleeper classes, restaurant, movie theaters etc.,.  It was about three hour ride to Himay Island, which is the largest of the 15 Islands making up this archipelago.  The most recently formed Island in this chain is Surtsey, which formed in 1963 through an eruption that lasted for nearly 4 years.  This was initially an under water volcano (130 m below sea level) that erupted enough material to build up an Island above water.  It is not open for general visitors so we were not able to go there.  They are carrying out research on the Island and only people involved in research projects are permitted currently. 

The captain of the ferry was nice enough to let few of us on to the control deck in the front and we got to speak to the captain and the first seamen.  They both gave lots of information about life in general to the active volcano, life on ship, 9-10 meter waves that make every one on the ship sick etc.,  It happened to be a day with calm ocean, so none of us had any problem.  The view was amazing.  The Eyjafjallajökull volcano was not visible due to large cloud cover over that area.

Once we landed on the Island, we walked over to meet with a Geologist who works on the Island to get a overview of the geology.  It was a very sleepy hour for most of us, and some how we managed to stay awake through the talk and surprisingly retained some of the things he showed and talked about.  After that we walked (dragging our baggage with us) through streets filled with about half an inch of fine volcanic ash that was getting blown by occasional gusts of wind.  It was incredible to see that much of ash coming over just two days of wind blowing toward this Island from the erupting volcano.  We only can imagine how much ash there is in Vik, which is downwind direction from the volcano, and where we will go to next in two days.

After settling in the Hostel, which happened to be very nice (probably recently renovated house) we went for dinner at the Fjolan Restaurant that was adjacent to the hotel.  Food was delicious and very expensive!  As a Birthday gift to Brannon, I and Jack took him on a late night hike to one of 1973 eruption cone, which was about 200 m tall.  It was a great hike and we were surprised to find out about it being geothermally hot on top.  Some one at the restaurant said it was not like that before, and it started radiating heat only recently.  We never know what we are going to see in the future here.  The recent eruption is A’a’ type, which is very blocky, sharp, and difficult to walk compared to Pahoe-hoe type, which is smooth flowing type.  We are excited about tomorrow, and can’t wait to hike to the top of the highest volcanic hill on Himay Island.  It should give us a great view of Eyjafjallajökull volcano also.

Good night!

We started the day with the goal of walking the shoreline and studying some spectacular inter-bedded sedimentary and volcanic sequences that were supposed to along the western shoreline.  We walked couple of kilometers all the way to the end where there was a Ferry launch area.  We found an interesting outcrop and spent a couple of hours there.  We then took a long walk back towards downtown Reykjavik and to our surprise, there were lots and lots of people along the main street – very much reminded us of Greenville main street in character.  Lots of restaurants, lots of high-end garment shops and many touristy places.  Walking is in the culture of Icelandic people, but lately American and Japanese cars are invading the lives of Icelanders and some one pointed out that there are nearly 2 cars for each household here. 

We walked back all the way to the hostel.  It was many miles worth of walk for the day but none of us minded it.  Of course we were beat completely when we got to bed.  Tomorrow we will be visiting some of the coolest places in Iceland – listed in top 10 places to visit in most books.  We are all excited.

Look back tomorrow for more.

We started our day at 8 AM, and visited Icelandic Meteorological Office who is the main governmental body that oversees weather, climate, seismological, and GPS network in Iceland.  We learnt about the current status of scientific observations and monitoring that is going on with respect to the erupting volcano in southern Iceland.  After that, Thorleifur took us to "the pearl" building (Oskjuhlid) that has a unique architecture and shape to the building.  This building is located on top of a small hill and houses the hot water storage reservoirs and distributes it through pipeline by gravity (without the need for pumping) for the city of Reykjavik.  Hot water is piped in from more than 60 km distance where geothermal fields are located.  We did a little grocery shopping for lunch, and realized it was as expensive as having a full meal for the group!  Everything is expensive here.

Our first field stop was at Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Station located in Orkuveita.  This is a really cool facility that generates currently generates about 213 MW of electricity.  In comparison, whole of Reykjavik city (population of about 150,000 or half of Iceland) only needs about 200 MW of electricity.  This is not the only geothermal power plant in Iceland!  We were (not so?) surprised to learn that it cost IKR 10 per KW of electricity and IKR 80 per cubic meter of hot water (currently, $1 = IKR 128). This power plant is very advanced and so they don’t have any waste water lagoon like some of the other ones.  Most of the waste water is captured and reused or injected back in to the ground.  They are also working on a plan to separate all CO2 from steam, dissolve it in water and pump it back into the ground to reduce natural CO2 emission that comes as part of exploiting geothermal solution. Second stop was at a small town named Hverangerdi for students to exchange currency. One of the restaurants in this town uses geothermal heat to cook and bake goods.  It was an amazing site to see the chef coming with a bag full of potatoes and dumping in to hot and steamy water outside the restaurant. 

Our next stop was to Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park located in the southwestern Iceland.  This place is very important to Icelanders historically because this is where they had their parliament was established way back in 1930.  Read more interesting information about this park’s history here.  Geologically, this site is located in the middle of the rift zone, so it displays the rift valleys and faults with large displacements clearly.  One of the faults run for more than 10 miles and is about 20m wall high cliff. There is a large freshwater lake, which is likely the largest freshwater lake in Iceland, located at this park.  One of the other coolest thing at this site is Nikulásargjá, which is a rift-fracture with clear, transparent and very deep water with tons of coins thrown in by the visitors.  Some of the students tried to put their hand to grab some coins but water was freezing cold, so just managed to pick some coins that were stuck along the shores.  The major river that feeds into the lake here is called Öxará.  Our guide, a historian, said the name is based on the legend that in ancient times, men and women were punished for their crimes at this site – men were beheaded and women were drowned in the cold waterfall called Öxarárfoss.  We had lunch at a picnic shelter that was surrounded by older volcanic mountains, some of them had snow cover on top.  From there, we were able to see one of the coolest shield volcano (very low angled volcanic cone like the ones in Hawaii).

Third stop was at Iceland’s famous waterfall Gulfoss. This waterfall was really cool and even though was not the tallest in Iceland, it had unique step-falls feature, a total drop of little more than 100 feet.  The geology of the area aids in development of the waterfall here.  Over geologic time (we are talking about several millions of years), glacial sediments and lava flows of different periods built the terrain and with the glaciers melting, large volume of water goes through the area with intense faulting developed by the pulling apart of the continent through mid-ocean ridge (rift zone). The rivers find the fault zone to be a plane of weakness and take course through them.  Due to differences in the erosional potential of volcanic (harder) and sedimentary (easier) rocks, it creates a deep canyon here.  This waterfall is eroding at a rate of about 25m/year (I have to check this number though!).  This means, in four years, the location of waterfall would have moved 1 meter upstream from where it is. 

The last geological stop for the day was at “The Geyser”, that erupts at about 5-6 minute cycle.  As we were approaching the geyser site, we got to witness one of the largest eruption of the geyser from our bus.  We spent about an hour there witnessing several geyser eruptions, some of us getting splashed by the erupting geyser.  It’s amazing to see the pool of water slowly rocking back and forth until a huge amount of gases and super heated water travel through from the depth and bulging up to become an explosion.  Just cool!

Our guide then recommended that we visit a small coastal town called Eyrarbakki, his native town where his grand father was a fisherman long time ago, to see an exhibition at a historic house and visited the local museum.  We were treated with some traditional songs by a group of locals at the exhibition house.  We also saw an amazing full rainbow as the sun went down in the late evening.  One of the best evenings.