Nem vandretur på Sólheimajökull-gletsjeren

We loved this tour! Carolina was so patient with our group which had a young child and seniors. She went at our pace and we felt perfectly safe. The glacier was gorgeous! Carolina pointed out the most tiny and subtle things that I never would have noticed without her. Book your tour fast because she said in two years this part of the glacier will be inaccessible.

We are very glad to have included an icewalker tour among the things to see and do in Iceland. Our tour guide was Karolina. She was very experienced, observant of our safety at all times, educated us about Icelandic glaciers, answered all of our questions, and allowed time for pictures. We were given proper gear for the glacier walk. We peered into a deep crevasse and drank from a stream of pure glacial melt water. We highly recommend the tour as a highlight of our Iceland trip.

Bottom line up front: Icewalkers Tours are a small adventure guide company operating in the south of Iceland. I have hired them on two occasions to lead the glacier excursion for our college’s trip to Iceland and recommend them to you without reservation. From the planning, scheduling, payment, and logistics in the lead up to the day of the trip, to the communication, equipment fitting, route selection and all of the events on the day in question, they are a friendly, thoughtful and capable organization. If you want to explore the glaciers of Iceland during your visit, look no further. I have a background in mountaineering, so I understand why they describe Sólheimajökull as an easy hike. It can be technical if you want it to be, but the technical aspects of glacier climbing/hiking can be mitigated through route selection. It is one thing to climb an outlet glacier with other mountaineers, but I can't imagine the difficulty in creating an experience for a diverse group both in terms of fitness and enthusiasm. They truly make it look effortless. However, if you look past our activities on the day of the trip, you can see the immense amount of prep. involved. I was in contact with Karolina throughout the week, trying to optimize what little flexibility remained in our schedule to find the best window weather-wise. At the same time, I know that Łukasz was all over the terminus of the glacier in the lead up to our arrival, updating his mental map of the changing conditions and selecting routes of varying difficulty so that he could accommodate how our group was performing on the day in question. In the end, they succeeded beautifully in finding the balance between the college students who were worn out mentally and physically after nearly two weeks in Iceland, to those who treasured every moment in crampons and wanted to stay up on the glacier into the very late Icelandic evening. Once again in our post course/trip reflections, all of the students reported that their day on Sólheimajökull was a high point during their time in Iceland. I will close with an encouragement and warning to any may read this review. It is critical that more of us visit glaciers, that more of us interact with them and observe them. The future for glaciers is bleak and the only hope for them is that they find a place in our mainstream consciousness. I am an American who climbed in Glacier National Park in my 20’s-30’s, all of those little glaciers I climbed on will be gone before I die. It is much the same for Iceland. Unless we change our trajectory, there will be little left beyond Vatnajökull in the next century. If there was a high point in the trip for me, it would be watching Karolina and Łukasz explain this grim reality to the students. It is one thing to hear about glacial mass balance in a lecture hall, and another to stand on a glacier and listen to two people who have spent much of their lives up on the ice, directly experiencing the changes occurring there and then relating those experiences in such a moving manner. I plan to be back to Iceland in 2026 with another group of students, and I will take them up on the ice, for the reason I mentioned above. When I do so, I will ask Icewalkers to guide the trip, both for their professionalism and attention to detail, but also for their ability to relate this crucial message to our students.