It’s rare to pack crampons, ice axes, and ropes for a bike trip, but it’s also rare to end up atop an ice cap with a bike. Kurt Refsnider and a crew of winter adventurers just completed a traverse of the largest glacier in Iceland, the 90-mile-long Vatnajökull ice cap. The solid early-spring melt crust on which they were hoping to ride remained elusive for most of their 235-mile route, making progress slow, but they were treated to absolutely ideal conditions for the final 4,000-foot plunge down Lambatungujökull Glacier (Lamb’s Tongue Glacier) and back out to the coast…

We sat at the toe of the glacier, removing our crampons and listening to a nearly continuous stream of rocks tumbling down the nearly-vertical slope above. After a couple of hours of elated exclamations as we excitedly worked our way 4,000 feet down the stunning glacier, our exit from the 90-mile-wide Vatnajökull ice cap, the group sat in concerned silence.

“We’re not getting out of the valley this way,” Justinas said, breaking the silence. He, as usual, had been a bit ahead of us and had been surveying the new situation. “We can’t even get up to it. There’s a cave back there.” He pointed to a cavern where the ice met the base of the cliff. Miron and Tyson were looking at the slopes farther down valley, eyeing potential ascent routes through the cliff bands.

Chris stood up and pulled his pack straps back over his shoulders. “This used to be the way out,” he said, gesturing toward the lateral moraine above us, its dirty ice core rotting away before us and destabilizing the unconsolidated debris plastered against the cliffs above. “This is how I skied right onto the glacier on that other trip! But Justinas is obviously right, we can’t get up that.”

Collectively, the glaciers in Iceland have lost over 800 square kilometers of surface area over the prior two decades. Higher latitude regions are experiencing the impacts of a warming planet in even more dramatic ways than the rest of the globe, and here we were, working our way through an area in which the many glaciers emanating from Vatnajökull are retreating at rates as much as 150 meters per year.

Six weeks of melt at the terminus of one of Vatnajökull’s outlet glaciers in 2021 (credit: Kieran Baxter)

We pushed our heavily-laden bikes awkwardly over the boulder debris deposited by the glacier before pausing to formulate a plan to scout possible ascent routes up the valley wall to a saddle above, our intended way out of the valley and to the coast. I looked back at what we had just descended, as aesthetically-pleasing a glacier tongue as any, flowing beneath craggy dark peaks of crumbly volcanic rock still wearing their winter cloaks of bright white snow. Higher up, the ice was covered in a blank white canvas of week-old snow. Lower down, the winter’s snow had melted off, exposing small crevasses and meltwater channels carved into the ice during the prior summer. I was still in disbelief that we had ridden down that and gotten across the entire ice cap above.

Chris had promised us what he called “supercrust,” that rare spring phenomenon of melt crust upon which one can tear around on a bike without the need for any packed trail or vehicle tracks to follow. Winter bike travel is typically entirely reliant on such tracks, and I’m captivated by the idea of being able to do a long trip in the backcountry without needing to follow where snowmachines or super jeeps have been. And Chris’ idea of crossing Vatnajökull, the largest ice cap in Iceland (and Europe’s second-largest), on bikes while cruising across such a crust? That was the dreamy vision that brought all of us together.

But alas, that supercrust dream had proven to be rather elusive over the prior five days. Well, that’s not entirely true. There was a formidable crust beneath 6-10” of fresh snow. But instead, we were left wallowing in that fresh snow for the first couple days of our ride, resigned to following vehicle tracks and modifying our planned route to take a more trafficked way to the edge of the ice cap (trafficked, in this case, meaning at least a few super jeeps had been through, packing the snow with their cartoonish 20-inch-wide tires).

Over those few days, we made steady progress from the coast up onto Vatnajökull despite the challenging conditions. We reached the hut atop the western part of the ice, a welcome shelter in the most unlikely of places – perched on the periphery of the yawning Grímsvötn caldera, the most active volcano in Iceland. Its last eruption was just over a decade ago, an event that melted through the ice, blanketed it with ash, and created an enormous outburst flood of meltwater from beneath the ice cap!

Our stay at this idyllic hut was brief, though. The warmth of the prior day, followed by subfreezing overnight, gave us hope for marginally rideable conditions. We gambled with a 12 AM start to make a big push to cross the bulk of the ice cap, leaving vehicle tracks behind and clinging to hopes of some semblance of crust. With just a scant few PSI, we finessed our own cartoonish tires across whatever firm surfaces we could find, stubbornly trying to claw our way out whenever we’d break through (which was probably every minute or two for most of the night). But slow progress was still forward progress, a mix of elation to be moving eastward rather than retreating, relief to have clear skies and a light breeze in a place where gale-force winds are common, and frustration at the still-meager crust.

Twenty-four hours later, we had completed the crossing of the entire ice cap, apparently the first self-supported traversal across the ice cap’s long axis (that being said, numerous other riders have done multi-day trips across parts of the ice cap). The feelings of accomplishment were, at the moment, tempered by our egress route becoming impassible – just one final challenge in a week best characterized as grinding away and optimistically hoping for the best while thoroughly enjoying the scenery and company.

“This’ll definitely work!” Tyson shouted down to Miron. A series of moss-covered ramps and rubbly traverses revealed themselves, allowing us to negotiate the cliffy 500-foot slope. Ever-eager to keep moving, Justinas was just below, shuttling his bags up, having already pulled them off his bike. He flashed a smile as he passed Tyson and me and said he’d be back down in a bit to help Tyson and me with our gear.

A couple of hours later, we were all back on our bikes and rolling through a summery scene in the adjacent valley, treeless expanses of green and shiny gray moss glowing vividly in the shockingly warm afternoon sun. We were down to T-shirts and riding without our pogies. The ice cap had disappeared behind us, now obscured by the nearly snow-free coastal mountains, and the up-valley wind carried a damp, sweet richness from the ocean.

Our studded tires clattered down the cobbly 4×4 track, and an ice axe and shovel rocked side-to-side on Miron’s pack as he pedaled enthusiastically. Somehow, the prior six days suddenly felt like a far-fetched dream; ironically, that was my initial reaction when Chris had mentioned his idea for this trip to me months prior – far-fetched, but absolutely worth chasing.

Thanks to Chris Burkard for having the vision for this adventure, to Miron Golfman, Tyson Flaharty, and Justinas Leveikas for coming together so enthusiastically to pull this off, and to Joel Barger and Víðir Björnsson for documenting part of the experience.