Instead of a slow slog on snowshoes, a giant bus sweeps passengers at up to 60kph across Iceland’s second-largest glacier.
The red vehicle is 15m long and fitted with massive tires for traction across the powder snow of western Iceland’s vast Langjokull ice cap.
From its highest point, at about 1,450m, the spectacular view takes in other snow-covered peaks.
Photo: AFP
With its 850 horsepower engine, the tour bus — resembling something out of a science-fiction movie — smoothly traverses the icy terrain on eight wheels, each 2m in diameter.
It has been named “Sleipnir” after the mythical eight-legged horse ridden by the Norse god Odin.
As strong winds whip up the fresh snow, the bus — created by keen mechanic Astvaldur Oskarsson, 59, who runs a specialized storage company — climbs higher to emerge from the low cloud into bright blue skies.
An Italian couple are among the few travelers to have braved the double COVID-19 test and five-day quarantine required on arrival in Iceland.
“It feels really emotional. Touching something that is so old, you feel so in contact with the Earth,” Italian Rossella Greco, 30, told reporters of the tour, which costs 10,000 Icelandic krona (US$71).
The bus’ dimensions allow it to cross crevasses 3m wide, although also mean it guzzles 45l of petrol per kilometer and leaves deep tracks in the snow.
However, the impact on the glacier “is small, as long as it is just one or two vehicles,” Icelandic Meteorological Office glaciologist Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson said.
Along the path climbing from the foot of Langjokull, signs have been erected showing the ice line of every 20 years since 1940.
Nearly 250km2 of surface area has evaporated since 1890.
“The elevation of the glacier is getting lower in many, many places,” tour guide Gunnar Gudjonsson told reporters. “So it’s actually new mountains or new nunataks [the ridge or summit of a mountain protruding from an ice field] coming out of the glaciers.”
“It’s incredible how fast it is melting,” he said.
In August, the dam of a glacial lake, formed by melt water, broke, causing flooding.
“It was not a major event, but it happened in a region where we are not used to such phenomena,” Thorsteinsson said.
Powerful floods called jokulhaup are normal around Vatnajokull, the biggest glacier in Iceland and also in Europe.
However, these are generally due to volcanic activity.
Langjokull’s chances of survival are slim, Thorsteinsson said.
“If this continues in a similar way or even in a still warmer climate, then it’s very likely that all of Langjokull, or maybe 80 to 90 percent of it, will be gone by the end of this century,” he said.
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