BELOW We landed in Iceland at 6 a.m. after an overnight flight from the United States, so we followed the rest of the tourists to the Blue Lagoon, the country’s most popular hot springs. Here, Kerstin Ulf and Darcee Mond enjoy a mud mask to help ease jet-lag. RIGHT Kerstin Ulf rides loaner skis to the sea. Her skis never made it to Iceland after an airline baggage snafu, but she made it look good on rental gear, nonetheless. IT NEVER GETS fully dark this close to the Arctic Circle come springtime, and the entire trip feels blissfully time free. “Is it Wednesday or Thursday?” Caroline asks at one point. “Who knows,” someone calls back. There is a sense of weight-lessness, like we have no limits. When there is full daylight, we ski. When we are tired, we return to the boat and sleep. There’s not as much snow as we’d like, but gorgeous traverses are still possible. And the skiing is rewarding. For two days in a row, we ascend over 2,000 vertical feet to ski down into the neighboring fjord. We lap bowls of perfectly soft corn snow. We ski carefully over snow bridges, listening to the sound of gushing water underneath. Avalanches aren’t a problem right now. “Moving water is our biggest concern,” Lel says. If you don’t believe in climate change, I suggest visit-ing Iceland in the spring to see the glaciers literally melting unseasonably into the sea. “I’m running low on water,” Kate says at one point during a climb. Erin pulls over to a tumbling stream and starts filling up her bottle—no filter needed. “We’re basically in a water bottle commercial right now,” she says. On our second-to-last night on the boat, Erin calls me into the wheelhouse, where she and Lel have a huge map of the fjords spread out on the table. We have a decision to make and she’s hoping I can help decide for the group. We either stay in the current fjord, which we know holds a decent amount of snow. Or we venture to the farthest fjord, home to the highest peak in the area, but a different aspect. It’s a gamble. “The scenery in the other fjord is quite nice,” Óli says, his form of subtle encouragement. So, I say, “OK, let’s try it.” The next morning, Óli motors us two hours to our destina-tion while we sleep. I roll out of bed to Kate descending the steep ladder from the deck. “It’s sunny and there’s a lot of snow here,” she says. “Oh, and Rebekka made croissants.” Free of distractions, we climb 4,000 vertical feet through multiple laps and top out on the rocky summit of 2,417-foot Bláfell, where we can spot the jet-puffed Drangajökull glacier in the distance and the ocean on both sides. Below us is some of the finest spring corn I’ve ever skied. We party downslope like a bunch of teenagers and, at the very bottom, find a lone, narrow ribbon of snow to the water’s edge. It’s the first time we’ll end our descent at the ocean, the longest line of the trip. At dinner that night, we talk to Óli and Rebekka about American politics. They chime in with stories from Iceland’s political system. “We don’t have just two primary political par-ties in Iceland,” Rebekka says. “We have many. We even have a pirate party.” Apparently, some anarchists and internet activists started Ice-land’s Pirate Party as a fringe political group in 2012. Since then, the party has become significantly more mainstream, earning 14.5 percent of the votes in the 2016 parliamentary election. In a way, we can relate: We’re a motley crew of women who came together with a greater cause—to rediscover ourselves in an inhospitable place. 068 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 13, Issue 3: Page 68
