Our tour

My partner and I booked with Troll Expeditions, just 5 hours before the tour started. I’d been thinking about it on and off leading up to our trip, and it wasn’t until our second day staying in the Golden Circle that we woke up and decided to do it. Luckily we got the last two spots, and it was super easy to book online.

We were visiting Iceland in October, which is shoulder season, so that likely worked in our favour. If you’re visiting during more peak times I’d definitely consider booking a couple of weeks out so you don’t miss out.

What to wear

What you’ll need depends on the time of year, but generally you should dress the same way you would for the rest of your Iceland trip. We wore our puffer jackets and hiking pants with our rain jackets and rain pants over the top, as it was rainy.

The main thing you should have, and what they highly recommend, is waterproof hiking boots. We didn’t have any (we do now) so we had to pay an additional fee to hire some.

You’ll be given a helmet and crampons, and I’d also recommend a beanie to wear under your helmet. I’d suggest waterproof gloves like these, since the walkway ropes were freezing to touch.

The drive

The drive from Vík to the glacier takes about 35 minutes in an overland vehicle. They call it a super jeep, but the vehicle we had was a lifted Ford Club Wagon, and was quite tall, so you needed to hoist yourself up to get in.

It was a day with lots of drizzle and fog, which made being inside the van a bit stuffy. On the way there you could see out the window, but on the way back the windows fogged up and it was hard to see out. The further we got from the Ring Road, the more barren and dark the landscape got, stretches of lava fields with moss-covered mountains on either side.

Our guide played some Icelandic music and shared some facts about the area. He said that Icelanders aren’t that scared of lava itself if Katla was to erupt, which was surprising, but it’s because of the melted ice and flooding that would happen.

Our guide

Our first interaction with our guide was strange. We had to meet at a cafe (edit: the pick-up location is now further down the road) and waited out the front, like our booking said. When he walked up, I said “Hey,” but he ignored me and took a phone call. Once he hung up, he said something like, “Are you guys here for the tour? When were you gonna tell me?”

Aside from that interaction, we did have a good experience. He took some time to explain how to walk with the crampons and kept a good pace so no one felt like they were holding the group up. He also gave us plenty of time to take photos, and went around offering to take a photo of each small group within the tour (the ones of my partner and I were also nicely framed, with the cave behind us).

I think it was just a strange start, but overall we were happy with our guide.

Walking on the ice

Overall there isn’t a lot of walking, but you’ll actually be walking on a glacier, so you need to be careful and confident. How comfortable you feel will depend on whether you’ve walked with crampons before.

Because we were visiting in early October there wasn’t any snow. But we were surprised by how much volcanic ash there was over the ice. It was mostly like walking on gritty sand, and it was raining while we visited, which made things wetter and more slippery. The only issue was when you’d get complacent walking on the ash and not dig your crampons in hard enough to catch the ice below, which made us feel unsteady on our feet.

As Australians, we aren’t familiar with walking on ice, so this was a completely new experience for us. We took our time and made deliberate steps, digging our crampons into the ice. I won’t lie and say it was easy, we almost fell over a couple of times, so we just tried our best to do it as carefully as possible.

You’ll also need to cross some make-shift wooden bridges connecting the different sections, with water flowing beneath. They’re essentially just slabs of wood, and with the rain they were a bit slippery, plus the timber itself was rough from being chopped up by crampon spikes.

Some of the bridges didn’t have proper railings, but there was a rope you could hold onto as you walked across. As it was wet and I didn’t have my gloves, I have very distinct memories of how cold that rope was to hold.

The cave

One of the incredible things about visiting the ice cave is that how I saw it isn’t how you will. It melts so quickly that it’s a unique experience for everyone. A week after we visited, I looked at some recently tagged photos and it had already changed from what we saw.

The appearance was a lot different to what I expected, with a lot of volcanic ash settled in the layers of ice, built up over the years. On a clear day, the ice can have a beautiful blue tone, but it was more of a greyish colour for us.

I’ve seen photos where it looks more like a tunnel, but what we walked through was more of an archway. It was a lot thinner than I’d expected, but still so incredible to experience. From there we came out into an open area with ice hills surrounding us like a valley.

There was a waterfall at the far end, with the volcanic ash making the water brownish. This flowed into stream that weaved its way back to where we’d started, which was the water we’d been crossing to get to this point.

A few more things worth knowing

• You’ll need to sign a liability waiver before the tour starts.
  
• There are a range of companies running tours, so you’re unlikely to be visiting alone. When we arrived, one group was just leaving and a second was already ahead of us, and by the time we were getting ready to go, a third tour had come through. Even though we had to let other groups pass a few times, it never felt overcrowded.

Final thoughts

Even looking back at the photos as I write this, I still can’t believe we actually got to do this.

We’d considered doing a glacier hike but were glad we a Katla tour instead. As it was our first time on a glacier, this option felt a lot less intimidating, while still giving us the experience while also seeing an ice cave.

Paying for a tour was 100% worth the cost. Technically you could visit the glacier yourself, but you’d need to be an experienced glacier hiker, your own equipment, and a 4×4 vehicle. We had none of that, so doing it on our own was not an option.