“Let’s go!” our guide announces as he leads our group towards the ash covered glacier. I can see the edge of Solheimajokull (Sol-high-mee-yo-kul-tl) glacial tongue as we trudged along. Parts of the glacier is covered in ash from recent volcanic eruptions. In volcanic speak-a-ture, “recent” can mean a few years, decades, or even a century ago.
Glaciers are permafrost and they are old; tens of thousands of years old. Some can be up to a million years old as they are in Antarctica. As new snow falls on top of an old layers of ice, the pull of gravity compresses the snow over centuries and builds up. Imagine you have a foot of fresh snow. When compressed and air bubbles are removed, you’ll probably end up with 1/8 inch of ice. While not 100% accurate, you get the picture.
Warming temperatures can cause ice at the edge of glaciers to break off (called calving). The icebergs float around the Jokulsarlon (Yo-kul-sar-lon) glacier lagoon and lazily make its way to the ocean in a matter of days or weeks. The icebergs may melt or break up again and the smaller chunks of ice washes up on the beach.
With a black sand as the dramatic back drop, the chunks of ice look like diamonds, hence named Diamond Beach.
Sadly, many glaciers are shrinking rapidly. My bucket list was to hike a glacier before they're gone.
The "black" you see on the glaciers is not rock but volcanic ash from past eruptions. Iceland is the "land of fire and ice" and here is one of the rare places on earth that you can encounter both at the same time.
The crevasse wasn't terribly deep, but it still sent chills to my knees. I was safely tethered to the glacier (so I was assured) and I can see the water rushing down the bore hole but couldn't see the bottom of it in sight.
Warming temperatures causes ice to break off more often. I didn't witness it this time, but it's described as a loud "Crack"
When ice do break off the glacier, they'll float around the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon before heading out to the Atlantic ocean nearby. Does this one look like a polar bear to you? Polar bears are not native to Iceland but occasionally you might see one because it drifted here on an ice floe from Greenland.
Some of these icebergs can be fairly large. It may take days or weeks to make it out to sea. Larger ones eventually melt or break up into smaller chunks.
You can see its mass by comparing it to the seabirds that hang out on top.
Smaller chunks of ice washes ashore and litters the beach.
With virtually no air bubbles and the light reflecting on them, they look like diamonds.
From part of a massive glacier to iceberg, I am potentially holding a piece of ice that might be tens of thousands of years old. Even hundreds of thousands of years old...
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