Early November the days were still long enough to get a bus to Mount Esja and do a little hike. Esja is the ridge you could spot in the background on previous pics, and since it's only about 1.000 meters, it's a healthy walk but nothing too crazy, ahem.



Esja refers to the entire ridge, and the path to Thverfellshorn is just one of the hikes. It's broken up in six parts, and the difficulty of each track is one to three boots. Naturally, it starts off with just one boot, and gets harder up the hill.



There's a couple of things we don't have in Iceland, such as an army, thunderstorms, trains, and, eh, forests. Unless you want to count this as a forest :)



Iceland is pretty much one gigantic volcano, so wherever you go, there's rocks for you. Still "One Boot", but better start paying some attention to the ground and not just gawk at the kick ass decor the whole time.



Looking back you can just make out Reykjavik in the distance.



At some point the difficulty steps up to "Two Boots". Apparently, this translates to "track? what track?". Either I missed a turn somewhere, or the track here is basically "get your ass up there and look for the next signpost". Wee :)



At this point, I was starting to realize that this lovely snowcapped peak is, in fact, not where we're going at all :)



High enough now to get some lovely views of the inland! Note the steam rising until it gets picked up by a layer of windy atmosphere.. or something. Unless I'm confused, this view should be in the general direction of Thingvellir and Gulfoss, the waterfall that you saw earlier.



Aha, I think I see the trail again in the distance. Or if not, well let's just follow those other guys.



Yup, got the trail back. It's a little easier, just you'd better not misstep. Especially on the occasional patches that are still covered in ice from the snowfall, a few weeks before.



So in case you're wondering what "Three Boots" is, well: this. This is more climbing than hiking, and the final part got extremely slippery; I thought my really-fancy-cause-I-got-them-in-Canada hiking boots were all-terrain, but they aren't. Considering the amount of bling bling I'm waving around in the form of camera gear, I called it a day about 60 m from the top. Note the asshat in t-shirt and shorts :)



So yeah, quite a relaxing afternoon, and since this is just a 50 min busride away this will probably be a regular get-away once the winter passes. Sort of like a bigger version of the Kluisberg :)