The Hard Way: Freezer Burn

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Outside Magazine December 2004

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The Hard Way
Freezer Burn (Cont.)

"LOOKS LIKE THE MOUTH of a whale," Karl says as we stand outside the entrance to the first cave the next morning. The four of us spent the night camping on the glacier and are now cranking down our crampons after a breakfast of blueberry skyr (sour-cream yogurt) and muesli washed down with syrupy shots of cod liver oil, Iceland's all-purpose human antifreeze.

"Looks more like the devil's arse to me," says Tyler. The opening at the blunt terminus of the glacier is a massive black ovoid, 25 feet tall and 40 feet across. We walk in together, Thorsten and Tyler armed with cameras, Karl and I with ice tools and ropes.

After our eyes adjust, we find the walls to be a gorgeous translucent blue, the surface scalloped into smooth, symmetrical wavelets. Moving farther into the cavern, we discover a short vertical duct passing straight up through the roof to a peephole of blue sky. To acclimate ourselves, Karl and I rope up and ascend this popsicle-colored mine shaft, poking up on top like two marmots, blinking in the brilliance, then scurrying back down our hole.

Deeper in the cave, the walls close in, darkness enfolds us, and we switch on our headlamps. It now indeed feels as if we're inside the throat—or the colon, depending on your perspective—of an enormous beast. Occasionally, basso profundo groaning, caused by the shifting ice, reverberates through the cave.

"This one could collapse soon," Karl announces as we crampon around freezer-size shards of ice that have calved from the ceiling.

There are two types of glacial caves: "warm" ones, created by heat from thermal activity beneath a glacier, and "cold"

Deeper in the cave, darkness enfolds us. It feels as if we're inside the throat of a beast. "This one could collapse soon," Karl announces.

ones, like the Langjökull caves, carved out by running water. A stream of meltwater flowing on top of a glacier drops into its bowels through a hole, or moulin. Rushing water cuts a shaft through the ice until it reaches bedrock, then burrows out the terminus of the glacier. Both types can have a life span of only a few months to a year.

After some distance, we can see light ahead and soon pass into a cavernous gallery with two cathedral-like vaults. Pale blue radiance bounces down from both shafts, flooding the main sanctuary. The architecture is astounding. Before us, hanging from the twin vaults, are gleaming white icicles—the stalactites of glacial caves—forming a semicircle of irregular pillars. Above us, both vaults swirl up for over 200 feet.

"See those stripes of black?" asks Karl, pointing to dark seams embedded in the cross section of ice. "That's ash from volcanic eruptions, probably from Mount Hekla." He studies the lines like an arborist would study the rings of an ancient tree. "This ice is somewhere between 200 and 400 years old."

"What do you say we climb up and out?" I suggest, eyeing a route that ascends a narrow icicle into the right-hand vault, then disappears up into the nautilus.

Karl nods, seats himself in belay position, and begins telling me of Iceland's famous volcanic eruptions.

For eight months in 1783, lava poured from the Laki crater, in south-central Iceland, the largest lava flow in recorded history. Tephra shot ten miles into the sky, pumping the atmosphere full of volcanic ash and gas. "The temperature in the Northern Hemisphere was temporarily lowered by one to two degrees centigrade; 70 percent of Iceland's livestock and 20 percent of its population died."

The Askja eruption of 1875 was the third-largest in history, Karl continues. "Southwesterly winds carried the tephra northeast and destroyed a few tens of farms."

I'm probing the brittle icicle with my hammer, trying to find a way up. "How far back can you trace your family history?" I ask him.

"Over a thousand years."

Above the icicle I find that the virgin blue ice, which looks ideal, is actually fickle and dangerous, tending to fracture wildly. At one point I'm certain the ice is about to shear off in a single slab (a "dinner plate" 20 feet in diameter) and provide me with the lead fall of my life.

Higher up, I discover something remarkable: The grim seams of spiraling dark matter provide the most secure purchase for my picks. This ice has a character different from the clear, unblemished ice, as if all the hardship of those periods congealed to create a solid, imperturbable substance.

We ascend through the belly of theglacier like mountaineering Jonahs, passing up through the blowhole to the surface and sunlight.

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