Six Hours, End to End: Where the Time Actually Goes

The blocks

It is worth laying the day out as arithmetic before booking it, because the shape is not what the phrase day trip suggests and people who arrive expecting an outing are disappointed by a schedule that nobody hid from them.

Roughly: half an hour of road to the meeting point, a period at the cabin for gear and briefing, 45 to 50 minutes walking out, an indefinite wait at the crater, about ten minutes descending, up to an hour on the floor, ten minutes back up, 45 to 50 minutes walking in, and soup.

Add it up and the hour underground is a sixth of the day. That is the honest ratio and everything else on this page is detail.

Getting to the cabin

The meeting point is a ski hut up in Blafjoll, reached in something like thirty minutes of tarmac from the capital. Pickup and drop-off in Reykjavik is available as an option on the booking, and if you take it the collection happens earlier and the timings shift accordingly.

Driving yourself is straightforward and the operator gives the route explicitly, including the instruction not to turn onto the gravel track, which exists because people do.

Arrive ten minutes before the stated time. This is not padding: the gear fitting is done as a group and a late arrival delays everyone behind them on a schedule that has a winch at the end of it.

The cabin and the gear

At the cabin the group is fitted with helmets and harnesses and briefed. This takes a while for a full group and it is time well spent indoors, because the alternative is doing it in wind at the crater.

This is also the moment to sort yourself out: layers on or off, boots laced properly, anything you do not want to carry left behind. You are about to walk for three quarters of an hour and then stand still in the cold for an hour, which are opposite requirements, and the answer is layers you can adjust rather than one decision.

The line of walkers heading back across the lava

The walk out

Forty-five to fifty minutes across old lava under moss. Gentle gradient, no real climbing, and a surface that is uneven at every single step because it is a broken flow with a soft green blanket over it.

This is the block that most commonly runs long, because a group moves at the pace of its slowest member and because photographs happen. It is also the block people most underestimate when they book, which is why the operator is unusually direct about footwear.

In fog, which is common, it is a line of people following a line of people. In clear weather there is a view over a third of south-west Iceland. Either is fine and neither changes the timing.

The wait at the crater

This is the block nobody mentions and the one worth planning for. The deck takes four or five people at a time and the round trip is roughly twenty-five minutes: ten down, an hour on the floor for that party, ten up. With the winch running continuously the group is fed through in waves.

Which means that if you are in the last party, you are standing at the rim of a crater on an exposed plateau for a substantial period, in whatever the weather is doing.

Two practical consequences. First, keep a warm layer accessible rather than buried, because the walk will have made you warm and the wait will not keep you that way. Second, this is the strongest argument for the earlier departures of the day, and for not being the last group to arrive at the rim.

Down, in, and up

About ten minutes on the platform, up to an hour on the floor, about ten minutes back. Eighty minutes, and it is the reason the other four and a half hours exist.

There is nothing to add to the timing here except that the hour is a maximum rather than a target, and coming up early is unremarkable and easy since the deck is running anyway.

It is worth saying what the eighty minutes buys, since the rest of this page is an argument about time. There is one drained magma chamber on earth with a mechanism for putting visitors in it. Not one of the best; the only one. Every constraint on this day - the parties of five, the short season, the walk, the wait - exists because that is what letting people into it without wrecking it demands. Read that way, the four and a half hours of overhead stop looking like inefficiency and start looking like the arrangement that keeps the chamber worth entering.

Back, and the soup

The same 45 to 50 minutes in reverse. It feels different: you are tired, the light has usually changed, and the party has stopped being strangers. Most people find it passes faster than the outward leg despite being identical.

At the cabin there is Icelandic meat soup with a vegetarian alternative, hot drinks and something sweet, all included. It is a hot meal at the end of two hours of walking in cold air, and its effect on the mood of a group is out of all proportion to what it is.

Then the drive back, and a finish time that puts a full afternoon somewhere else out of reach. Treat this as a day rather than an item, and it is an extremely good one.

Before you book

Six hours, in blocks

1. Half an hour of road

   To a ski cabin in the hills. Pickup in Reykjavik is an option on the booking.

2. Gear and briefing at the cabin

   Helmet and harness fitted indoors, out of the wind. Sort your layers here.

3. 45 to 50 minutes out

   Old lava under moss. Gentle gradient, uneven at every step.

4. The wait at the rim

   Parties of five go down in waves. Being last means standing in the weather.

5. Ten minutes down

   On the open platform, slowly, with the walls receding.

6. Up to an hour inside

   A maximum rather than a target. Coming up early is easy.

7. 45 to 50 minutes back

   The same ground, tired, and it generally passes quicker.

8. Soup at the cabin

   Included, hot, and disproportionately good after two hours in cold air.