Hornstrandir Day 1 – 6/27/15 ~9 miles

Squatch and Wing It picked me up from the airport yesterday and after some errands in Reykjavik we drove north to the Westfjords.

Squatch taught us a fun game called “Find a crappy view in Iceland”. No one scored.

 

 

Today we finished the drive to the town of Isafjordur where we got on a ferry to Hornstrandir, a nature preserve area that has no road access where will hike for 3 days.

 

 

Hornstrandir is known for its population of arctic foxes, the only land mammal native to Iceland. Our hopes of seeing one were very quickly met while we took a quick snack break just after getting ashore. The foxes here are obviously used to humans, and so dang adorable!

 

 

Though it was already around 7pm by the time we got done our snack. We decided to hike a few miles on a trail up to a viewpoint atop a cliff and down the backside where we planned to camp.

Up top we got very delayed by a very cute fox we named Tag-along who followed us for at least a mile. Then another fox appeared who we can only assume was Tagalong’s mother who did not get very close to us but kept barking (which sounds like chicken squawking) for Tagalong to get his butt back to her.

 

 

 

 

After all the fox cuteness we continued  on to the trail down the other side, only to find there was no trail at all (cue the CDT flashbacks). So we cross countried it down a lovely valley. It was 11:30pm by the time we made it down to some old building foundations near the beach where we set up camp.  It really didn’t feel so late because the sun was still up. Land of the midnight sun!