Time to get out of the city again and onto yet another tourist bus trip!
One of the sights we stopped at was just the tip of the glacier called Sólheimajökull. This was basically just to get an idea of what it looks like; for a closer look you could do a glacial walk trip, but I'll wait with that until it's a bit warmer -- it'll be cold enough as is.



First things first -- people have been asking me if glaciers are "still there in the summer". Well. This is not a little patch of ice; the biggest one is about the size of West Flanders. These are enormous, massive blocks of ice that, yes, are always there. Keep in mind that we just basically stopped at the long tail end of Sólheimajökull, which in turn is just a "tentacle" out of Mýrdalsjökull. For epic proportions, check out Vatnajökull at 3.100 km^2.



A shot looking over this tail. Note how muddy this ice is; naturally "glacial water" is being marketed as extremely pure and healthy and what not, but in reality it's not glacial at all 'cause if it was, it'd be crap :)

Also note the cracks; as you get to the actual glacier, these become crevasses of sometimes a few hundred meters deep, with guide-ignoring-tourists falling in pretty much all the time (including two today as I type this). Wonderful :\



Again note the proportions of tourists vs. glacier vs. mountain, and appreciate what this thing turns into "out there"...



My turn to sneak in/under there, and check out the translucency and subsurface scattering!



Standalone block that broke off as the glacier retracts.



Close up view of the (big) chips of ice being held in place by even more ice. This looks like a freeze frame from a video depicting a glass explosion off the left, totally awesome. The whole thing is basically like this, at least in this location (ie. in the upper layer, which apparently has a different structure from the lower parts, due to the difference in temperature that eventually develops).



Yet another view: you basically have the (ex-)volcanic rocky ground that you've been seeing, with a solid, sharp, slippery and sloped block of ice hovering and sliding above it. The guide tells everybody about six times to not get on the glacier, but of course people have to do it anyway. As you can see, that is not the safest thing to do. If you thought walking on a frozen city road or sidewalk was tricky -- you know, the flat, smooth, not sharp kind -- well, this speaks for itself.



So, walking back to the bus, this is all ground that was covered by the glacier in the year 2000. And now it's not. I don't know where I heard it but I thought the current estimate for glaciers to be gone altogether is something like 120 years? Well, anyway, I'm sure I can post more (accurate) lecturing once I've actually done a glacial walk sometime this year... stay tuned! :)