Glacier Walk on Sólheimajökull — Crampons, Ice Axes and Climate Change Made Visible

Sólheimajökull is an outlet glacier of Mýrdalsjökull on Iceland's south coast. It has retreated more than one kilometre in the last decade. You can see exactly where the ice was in 2010 from the moraine it left behind — a band of stripped grey rock that looks like a scar on the landscape. I have guided on this glacier since 2007 and I have watched it shrink. That context changes the walk. We kit up with crampons and ice axes at the car park and walk onto the ice surface: blue ice seracs, meltwater streams running into crevasses, ice caves where the light is turquoise. I explain glacial geomorphology — what moraines are, how the ice layers preserve climate history, why this glacier moves several metres per year even as it retreats — and Icelandic geology and mythology around ice and fire. The walk is 3 hours on the ice and suitable for anyone with a reasonable fitness level. The landscape is genuinely unlike anything else on earth.