Day 18 - Studlagil Canyon

We left camp at about 7.30am to head for Studlagil Canyon, the most anticipated spot on our itinerary, by me at least.  It was about an hours drive, the road was really icey still, and upturned vehicles in the ditch were a salutary reminder of how much care was needed.

Oops

We'd decided to go to the main viewing platform first, evn though we knew it did not have the best views.  We arrived in one piece, and set off for the main viewing platform, just a minute from the carpark.  It’s is a pretty much veritical set of stairs, 239 of them, that make their way down the hillside with a small platform at the bottom that juts out a little way over the river.  I’d taken the drone with me and it wasn’t too windy, and it was foggy but not yet snowing, so I sent her on her way.  There was someone else flying a mini drone that you could barely see, so I was a bit nervous about a mid-air collision, so kept quite high initially so I could easily see my drone.  Then I saw him come out and land, so I did a couple passes through the canyon.  I got a warning to say signal was weak, a photographer I follow lost his drone there this time last year, crashed into the canyon wall and into the drink.  Yikes.  So I flew it back up high again until I had good contact, and tried again.  Once I was happy that I’d captured some stuff, I landed it back on the platform.  As I went to put it away, I noticed it was totally covered in ice, all the propellers had a layer of ice on them.  I wiped it all down with a chamois and it seemed to be ok.

We trekked back up the 239 steps, paid $2.85 to use the loo (clearly, spending a penny is outdated) and then we drove back to the other car park for the better viewing option.  

This requires a 4km walk into the canyon, but it is mostly flat, but oh so icey, and we were so grateful for our newly purchases yaktraks.  What an amazing difference they made.

Yaktraks are the bomb

It was a super nice walk along the side of the river, with glimpses into the canyon, which was covered in frozen water/icicles.  We spent ages at the canyon itself once we got there, walked the length of it, went down as close as we could get to the river, but it was too icey to go all the way to the bottom like you can in summer.

You can just see the viewing platform

We walked back out again, and headed off to the next destination on our list – Dettifoss. 

This required us to take a back road, which is not nearly as well maintained as the 1 route that we were on, so it wasn’t long before the ice was super thick and eventually we came to a stop as the road was closed.

Back we went to the main road, and headed to our campsite for the night to re-jig our plans for the next couple of days.  I bought some wine to celebrate my birthday, and B cooked dinner. 

What an awesome place to spend my birthday, I felt very grateful to have such opportunities.