This morning we started our expedition to the center of Iceland. Our guide from South Iceland Adventure shared a ton of stories with us about this trip going wrong. 100 mph winds, people venturing from the car and freezing to death, snow-blindness and white-out conditions can happen this time of year near the Hofsjökull glacier. The forecast looked promising, but we did see temperatures swing from -15*C to +15*C in one day.
Hofsjökull is the country’s largest volcano.
We started the day with some traditional Icelandic food. Our guide Siggi told us it’d give us lots of energy for the mountains… after we told him how good it was, he told us it was horse…
Hanging out with our Swedish mountain guide Emma…
Untouched terrain towards the Hekla fissure volcano…
Crossing a cravasse…
As we rolled into camp with one final river crossing to go, we saw the sunset over the mountains and the Northern Lights- Aura Borealis at the same time. It was an unbelievable show by mother nature…
To recharge the batteries and swap out some members of our crew at #MissionClimate, we hit Reykjavik for the weekend. It was an important part of the trip, as we got to experience a lot of culture in a short period of time.
Reykjavik is the world’s northernmost capital city and they both work hard AND party hard… we celebrated a week of really quality filming and remembered we were all here because of how passionate we are about what we do.
Of course, our mission to Iceland was for Climate Unchange on behalf of Wardour And Oxford and South Iceland Adventure but Matt Wilson of Under30CEO couldn’t resist checking out the entrepreneurial climate as well. Here is his first hand account…
Traveling solo and being part of a global startup community can be a pretty powerful combination. A few days after the press release went out that I’d be Ambassador for Climate Unchange and was headed to Iceland, I got a tweet from Bala Kamallakharan a startup investor in Reykjavik.
I hopped in his car within 5 minutes of meeting him, after hearing the country’s largest business plan competition was going on at the University of Iceland. It was entirely in Icelandic, but met some amazing people I got the feel for Startup Iceland quite quickly.
After hanging with their student project management team, I ended up hitting a snowboard competition after the event, drinking champagne at the Innovit technology incubator, having dinner at one of the best restaurants in Iceland with the team, and hitting downtown Reykjavik for the afterparty with a bunch of awesome Icelandic entrepreneurs. I was extremely impressed with the companies and the entrepreneurial spirit of this small island in the North Atlantic.
A huge thank you goes out to Startup Iceland, Innovit, and University of Iceland for making me VIP for a day.
If you enjoy skiing untouched snow, you know there is no better feeling than getting out in the backcountry far away from civilization. Today, South Iceland Adventure took our crew for the experience of a lifetime.
If you want to get a whole camera crew to the top of a volcano, the only way is by superjeep. These things are setup for serious expeditions and had no problem taking us up the Tindfjoll Volcano in the Thórsmörk mountain range. (Named after the Norse God Thor).
Our South Iceland Adventure guides brought up a snowmobile for us so we could find some amazing settings for the Climate Unchange film. Sure enough, the weather broke and we had an unbelievable day… our crew from Bladesman Productions were thrilled.
At the top of this ridge, we shot some awesome ski and snowmobile scenes. Imagine the most amazing untouched bowl, with a perfect windblown snow cornice to drop in off of. Forget lift access skiing… we just had our guides pick us up in the snowmobile at the bottom and dropped back another dozen times…
At this point we were absolutely speechless, but of course there was more to do and we topped it off by jumping off a massive waterfall on the way back to our base into a 4*C lagoon. South Iceland Adventure calls it their Wet, Wild, and Fun canyoning tour, and it was certainly all of that…
Today was the best day in Iceland yet. We were really hoping to get clear skies to film, and when we did it was simply spectacular.
Driving down the road, the skies broke and we immediately jumped out of the superjeep to start flilming as the clouds lifted above these cliffs.
The great thing about Iceland is that there is amazing scenery everywhere–the farms in the countryside are full of structures like this an even some Viking ruins, which made for some pretty good shots on film.
Today we also had our first real superjeep experience on the black beaches of Iceland. It literally looked like the surface of the moon; kilometers and kilometers of black sand and windblown dunes. We could only imagine what the crew of this old US Military plane crash could have been thinking when they saw where they were.
After the scenes at the black beach, we headed up the Katla Volcano on Myrdalsjokull and the cloud ceiling lifted perfectly for us. We did some amazing time lapse shots at the summit looking over the Eyjafjallajokull volcano and celebrated an awesome expedition so far.
The weather in Iceland changes every 5 minutes. I’ve never been anywhere that it can rain, snow, be sunny, windy, and cloudy at the same time. When you are shooting a film, it all depends on the weather… today the clouds wouldn’t cooperate so we headed to an old fishing village called Stokkseyri for some culture at the Elf and Troll museum.
It’s true–Icelandic people believe in the Norse Mythology of elves and trolls, and really don’t like when people question their beliefs.
The weather looks like it’s clearing up for tomorrow says our South Iceland Adventure guide Siggi. We’ve never met anyone who understands the weather in the mountains better than this guy. We’re pretty sure he’s related to Thor, the Norse god of storms and strength.
Speaking of storms–we’re lucky we didn’t go to the polar ice cap as planned in the north of Iceland this week. The expedition group that did needed a sno-cat to get home.
Today we had our best day of shooting yet and had the best outdoor activities of the trip so far. We’ve been staying with the Rapace Kiteboarding team, so we started the day off messing around shooting some stuff.
Next we hit the Seljalandsfoss Waterfall, did some stuff with the go-pro helmet cam running underneath the waterfall… shot some scenes in an awesome desolate area with Icelandic horses and did some hitch-hiking.
(and yes that picture is real)
We ended the day going up onto the glaciers to ice climb at one of the scenic places on earth… the Sólheimajökull glacier was covered with lagoons throughout the huge valley. What we went on was a little tiny piece near Eyjafjallajökull (the 2010 volcano- E15). Eyjafjallajökull is a small part of an even more enormous volcanic glacier. Pretty amazing seeing the volcanic ash all over the place.
Today we met Mr. Iceland… our camera crew’s last assignments were in Indonesia and Hong Kong where their attire was a little bit more tropical than Iceland. To loosen things up during #MissionClimate we’ve been shooting some quick spoof scenes starring our know-it-all friend Mr. Iceland in his wig and florescent onesie.
South Iceland’s countryside has been pretty impressive and South Iceland Adventure put us in our superjeeps and took us to some pretty awesome places. We visited:
-Geysir (that is it’s name… all the rest followed suit) (you can do that when your country is founded in 874)
-The Selfoss Waterfall
-Þjóðveldisbærinn Stöng Viking House (we called it the Viking House)
After arriving in Reykjavik, we set up our base here in town and brought together our crew for the first time. With Icelandic, American, British, and Swedish nationalities as part of the team, having a diverse set of ideas was certainly not a problem.
#MissionClimate Planning Complete
Our British documentary producer Archie Brooksbank from Bladesman Productions took the helm and together we’ve put the final details on our a really fun storyboard we’ll begin shooting tomorrow. Our guides from South Iceland Adventure are ready to put us in the superjeeps at 9am to head to the geysirs.
The evening ended with a lamb dinner and some Viking Beer…