— Helgi Christensen, an Icelandic ice climber explaining how the Icelandic weather drastically changes throughout the day despite being relatively stable in over the year to a journalist of Rock and Ice Magazine in 1998.
Ines Papert and Audrey Gariepy ice climbing in Iceland
These two women, among the best ice climbers in the world, put Iceland on the map as an ice climbing location. We the locals have known this for a few decades, but the word is just getting out to the rest of the world. I guess the name “Iceland” should have been a hint. This trip was documented in Alpinist Magazine issue 22.
Most of the climbing showed in this video is done at the cliffs just by the farm Björg. It’s a unique location, where you can ice climb right from the oceans waves. The farmer has just recently realized the potential of the place and has now opened up his farm guesthouse for climbers and posts regular updates on ice conditions.
The Icelandic “Ice Farmer” featured on Up Climbing
For the past couple of years the farmers of Björg, an isolated farm in the north of Iceland, have been harvesting ice. They recently discovered that people like to climb ice and that the sea cliffs just next to the farm are world class ice climbing. They have been climbed by top climbers and even featured in Alpinist. But fresh from the press is a good article from Up Climbing, documenting the stay of one of their writers. They got all of the ice they wished for and climbed in all of the major ice climbing areas in Iceland.
For all you Germans check out this video of Olli (Oliver Pocher Show) climbing on an Icelandic glacier with a friend of mine from Icelandic Mountain Guides.
It’s pretty funny even if you don’t speak German.
I’m happy to see that I’ve gone well past 300 followers in the week I’ve been offline. I’ve been busy ice climbing, not in Iceland this time, but Norway. However I’ll post this picture of an ice climber in Iceland. Iceland is one of the few places in the world where you can climb frozen waterfalls right by the ocean.
This is an amazing ice climbing video of the first ascent of Dynjandi, one of Iceland’s most beautiful waterfalls. Half of the waterfall breaks up and gets washed down to the ground, taking with it one of the guides ice axes. Luckily everybody was ok and the camera was on!
It makes sense that ICEland is good for ICE climbing. There is a lot of water flowing in the Icelandic mountains and it tends to freeze when winter sets in making Iceland an ice climbers playground. Endless routes await first ascents and plenty of well established routes of all grades. For more info about ice climbing check out the Icelandic Alpine Clube, Ice Climbing tours with Icelandic Mountain Guides, Ice Climbing with Bergmenn or the creators of the posted video, Borea Adventures sailing, climbing and everything.
The most interesting pictures from Iceland. Photos of Reykjavík, photos of Icelandic People, pictures of Icelandic Nature and Iceland Travel.
I'm heavily affiliated with Iceland and proud of it. Lived most of my life in Iceland but spent enough time abroad to truly appreciate Iceland's uniqueness.
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