Ski touring in the land of Iceland
Right at the time of long conflicts, with the planet's big shots hunting for rare earths and even threatening to butt heads—the kind that seriously harm the planet's health—we decided to look for a bit of peace in a truly unique land, where the only drift is continental and the cracks stop at the crust, seeking that rare lightness of fine powder, manna for every ski-nut.
So, Iceland it is—the island bubbling with good and right things to let your gaze wander over infinite icy prairies and puffs of heat you can feel from your core. A marriage of opposites that joins hot and cold, stews and permafrost, and boiling ice. And so, after a spring welcome in Reykjavik and a night at the Hotel Aurora with not a hint of the Northern Lights, we settled into a quartet of studded Dacias in a caravan, not unhitching until Akureyri, our base for warming up the skins. Spread across 5 wooden cabins perched over the Blomsturvallavegur fjord, you realize that trees are a rare commodity here; they’ve stopped bothering and decided not to take root, making life easier for large clumps of sedge and an expanse of moorland tinted in burnt Iceland earth, trusting only in a generation of replanted ones that look like little groves combed with a rake.
Welcoming us, as exceptional neighbors, were a few seals enjoying the usual daily chill and a ptarmigan on the doorstep, determined to ditch the trendy autumn-winter camouflage for a handful of cereal crumbs left by those who preceded us in the end-of-stay cleanup.
Then, wandering over cones and slopes in a perfect democracy of peaks, all with an equal right to height, cloaked in a growing whiteness, day after day, snowfall after snowfall, with spirits rising and days now running out, finding that serenity of a meaningful peace, right where every human footprint is aware of the ephemeral step of a journey through time.
P.S.
A big thanks to all the fantastic adventure companions, to my bunkmate Davide, and to the super Mountain Guides Adriano and Stefano from Snowder—great people both in and out of their boots.
Giulio
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