SAIL AND SKI

Ski touring by boat along Iceland’s north coast
By Alf Alderson

It’s possible that the hardest thing about sailing and skiing along the north coast of Iceland isn’t the logistics, the navigating of rocky shorelines, the beach landings in choppy seas and the long climbs to the summits of various sub-Arctic peaks, but pronouncing the place names.
For instance, on the second day of my adventure here our schooner ‘Hildur’ anchored in Rauðavík Bay before we took the tender ashore to climb a 1129-metre mountain that goes by the entirely unpronounceable name of Skálavíkurhnjúhur.
Getting to the top of Skálavíkurhnjúhur is no less demanding than trying to pronounce it, for although there’s no real climbing involved, it’s a long, hard slog of several hours on skis. You may be thinking skis are designed for coming down hills, but when fitted with ski touring bindings and ‘skins’ which attach to the bottom you can also climb on them.
Iceland lends itself well to a trip like this, where you use a boat as your base from which to ski. The peaks of the Í Fjörðum region which we were exploring are easily reached in just a few hours sailing from the busy whale watching centre of Húsavík, which despite a modest population of just 2500 souls is one of the largest settlements on Iceland’s north coast. A boat is by far the best way to access Í Fjörðum, a perpetually snowcapped landscape of mountains and moorlands that is virtually inaccessible by vehicle and which has no settlements other than an occasional remote, abandoned farmhouse or an equally remote ‘summer house’ here and there along the shoreline.
I was travelling in a mixed group of Canadian and Brit skiers along with ski guide Friðjón Þórleifsson (see, I told you everything is unpronounceable) a man who besides providing the kind of seemingly effortless leadership that is the mark of a top guide also had a seemingly endless stream of jokes with which to regale us as we sat in the galley each evening after a hard day in the hills. None of them are repeatable here…

I’d been attracted to Iceland since it offered the chance to ski amongst landscapes that you just don’t find in the Alps or Rockies; where else can you stand atop a mountain and look down on the ocean, the small dot of Flatey Island just offshore, further north the outline of Grímsey Island through which passes the Arctic Circle (and which we’d later sail to, just to say we’d been to the Arctic) beyond which is nothing until the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean?
And although ski touring is quite hard work in itself, there was never any rush about going about our daily business, since with almost 24 hours of daylight when I was there in early May it doesn’t really matter what time you head off into the hills – even if you got ‘benighted’ it would only be for about 90 minutes.
Our days followed a regular pattern. Rise to bright sunlight glinting on the still waters of whichever bay we’d anchored in for the night, down a huge breakfast and then start getting into our ski kit. In the relatively confined quarters of a 60-foot oak schooner this was done in shifts, and once everyone was fully kitted up we lowered skis, poles and rucksacks into the Zodiac tender and headed ashore.
Getting out of a bobbing RIB whilst wearing ski boots and carrying a pack isn’t the easiest of ways to start a day’s skiing, and getting back in when there’s a bit of a swell running proved even more difficult on one occasion which saw three of us emptying seawater out of our ski boots when we eventually clambered back aboard the ‘Hildur’ – that’s not something that happens too often in Verbier or Meribel…
Once ashore we set off walking towards the snowline, which is usually around 200 metres above. Here we remove skis from packs, attach the skins to the bottom, clip into the bindings and then settle in for several hours off ‘skinning up’ to our chosen summit. This is a slog, but every time we stop for a breather we’re greeted by views of elemental sub-Arctic landscapes – sky, snow, sdea, it’s about as primal and as glorious as it can get and more than repays the effort.
And, of course, if you keep climbing for long enough you inevitably reach the summit. Most of the mountains that stand guard along this stretch of Iceland’s north coast top out at around 1000-metres, which means that give or take the couple of hundred metres of snow free slopes at the bottom you’ve earned a descent as long as that in most decent sized ski resorts.
But unlike most ski resorts this descent will be with just a handful of friends on untracked spring snow, with no sign of humankind to be seen anywhere other than in the form of the ‘Hildur’, a tiny speck sitting on the deep blue waters of the Greenland Sea far below to eventually welcome us back to warmth and comfort after a long, hooning, grin-inducing descent which almost makes you ready to head back up and do it all again.
For now, food, drink and soft slippers prevail – but there’ll be plenty of chance to repeat it all again tomorrow…
Alf Alderson travelled with Bergmenn Mountain Guides www.bergmenn.com