in Iceland, standing 463 meters (1,520 feet) high on the north coast of Iceland's Snæfellsnes peninsula.
Sunset over Kirkjufell on our last night in Iceland.
Stunning glacial landforms...
dominate northwestern Iceland as seen in the three panoramas below.
View across Miklavatn valley. (Click on image to enlarge.)
The morning view from our hotel in Siglufjörður. (Click on image to enlarge.)
Cirques above Siglufjörður. (Click on image to enlarge.)
Siglufjörður is Iceland's northernmost town...
and the undisputed herring capital of the north Atlantic during the 1900s.
Siglufjörður today.
Siglufjörður in 1938. (Image from a photo in the herring museum.)
Interior of the highly interesting herring museum.
Deeply glaciated landscape at Héðinsfjörður, looking south into the highlands. (Click image to enlarge.)
Húsavík is a charming seaside village...
on the shore of Skjálfandi bay and has become a center of whale watching in northern Iceland due to whales of different species that frequently enter the bay.
Click on image to enlarge.
Dettifoss waterfall in northern Iceland...
is extraordinarily impressive and is about 100 meters (330 feet) wide and has a drop of 44 meters (144 feet). Located in Jökulsá á Fjöllum, a large canyon cut by several volcanically-generated outburst floods — jökulhlaups — during the middle Holocene.
Dettifoss on a snowy spring day. (Click image to enlarge.)
Geothermal energy...
contributes approximately 30 percent of Iceland’s electricity, the other 70 percent coming from hydropower. This is the Krafla facility, rated at 60 megawatts.
One wonderful benefit of a nearby power plant are the hot pools for soaking. Our group spent two hours relaxing here in the therapeutic waters.
Boiling mud pots and sulfur fumaroles...
at Námafjall Hverir were exceptionally dramatic this morning, given the cold temperatures and recent snowfall.
Click on image to enlarge.
Snow covered pseudo-craters...
at Skutustadir, on the south shore of Lake Myvatn in northern Iceland, are the result of steam explosions beneath a lava flow. Geologists use the term “rootless cones” to describe these unique volcanic landforms.
Goðafoss waterfall...
in northern Iceland drops from a height of 12 meters (39 feet) across a width of 30 meters (98 feet).
The flight from Höfn to Akureyri...
across the Vatnajökull ice cap was largely obscured by clouds today, but here are a couple of shots from the air.
Our charter aircraft, a Dornier 328 turboprop.
Braided outwash channels near Höfn, Iceland.
Glacially carved valleys south of Akureyri, Iceland.
Snowmobiling on the Vatnajökull glacier...
was loads of fun this afternoon!
The adventurous members of Apex Expedition’s snowmobile team. (Click on image to enlarge.)
An Eider duck family...
out for a paddle this morning.
Common Eider (Somateria mollissima): Three adult males, two adult females and one juvenile male.
Icy diamonds litter a black sand beach...
belonging to the greater Breiðamerkursandur glacial plain, located near the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon. Large chunks of glacial ice that have calved from the glacier front are worked and polished by the heavy surf into lovely shapes and colors.
Vatnajökull National Park...
was the location of a glacier hike today, where we strapped on crampons and climbed high into the ice. Nice!
Apex Expeditions co-leader Kevin Clement.
An extraordinary jökulhlaup...
gushed from the subglacial lake Grímsvötn in Vatnajökull, Iceland. In November 1996 a surge of floodwater from beneath the Skeidarárjökull glacier inundated the Skeidarársandur outwash plain seen here, destroying a large segment of the Ring Road on the southern coast.
The Eldhraun lava field...
is the biggest lava flow in the world, created by the eruption of Laki volcano in 1783-84. The enormous basaltic lava flow covers 565 square kilometers (218 square miles) yet it averages only 12 meters (40 feet) in thickness. It is covered with a soft and vibrant arctic hair moss as shown in the image below.
Exploring the glacial landscape...
at Kötlujökull Mýrdalsjökull, the fourth largest glacier in Iceland.
The dark material incorporated into and on the glacial ice is ash and cinder from countless volcanic eruptions.
The interior of a natural tunnel in the glacial ice.
Seljalandsfoss waterfall...
drops 60 meters (197 feet) and one can explore behind the enormous curtain of water.
Skógafoss, a short distance from Seljalandsfoss, is one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland, with a width of 25 meters (82 feet) and a drop of 60 meters (200 feet).
Eyjafjallajökull volcano...
last erupted in April 2010 and disrupted air traffic over northern Europe for more than a week.
The volcanic edifice illuminated by the morning light.
NASA image of eruption plume emanating from the southern tip of the island.
Langjokull Glacier...
rises to 1,450 meters (4,756 feet) and today we drove to the summit of the second largest ice cap in Iceland in two “super jeeps.”
View of the ice cap from the lower outwash plain.
View southeastward from the summit of Langjokull glacier across the rift valley (mid-ocean ridge) toward Hekla volcano, approximately 50 km (30 miles) distant.