ARON FRANKLÍN

Aron is the co-owner of Local Guide. He was raised in the Vatnajökull area and has been living and working on the glacier from a young age and is incredibly knowledgeable about the local area. He is passionate about keeping Local Guide an authentic family run company, carefully selecting his staff and showing the utmost respect for the local area and community. Aron never stops and is forever tinkering, fixing, maintaining to keep the company running as a well-oiled machine. He, Helen and their son Trausti split their time between on their family farm in Öræfi and Reykjavík.

ÍSLEIFUR SIGURJONSSON

Ísleifur has been a part of the Local Guide team since the early days after Aron and Helen took over the business in 2015. Desk jobs have never appealed to Ísleifur and every chance he got he was looking out the window at the sky and mountains. Now he sees them full-time through the windows of the super jeeps, from the glaciers, and the cockpits of the planes he flies in his spare time. Ísleifur is joined on shift by his loveable dog Malt.

Þórir Gunnar

Þórir has been a glacier guide since 2010. As part of our great team of guides he likes to spend his winters on the glacier and the summer in the Icelandic highlands. He is a cool but warm person all in one and enjoys the company of his dog Mói.

Hanka

Hanka came to Iceland in 2011. She found her way to guiding in 2016 and was spending the winters as a skiing instructor in Czechia, Austria and Japan. Today we are grateful to have Hanka all year around in Iceland and she switches seamlessly between guiding and our office team. In the summertime she enjoys multi day hikes in the highlands.

Gunnlaugur Ingivaldur Gretarsson

Known as “Disco” to many of you, Gunnlaugur might be the oldest in our team but is a teenager at heart. Witty and humorous as well as a very experienced guide and clearly a people’s person. He is very knowledgeable and quite a story teller who gave up on being a full time hipster over a decade ago and ventured into the outdoors. Fun fact: has watched the entire Marvel cinematic universe!

Kasia Kujawa

After several years of testing and trying all kinds of guiding throughout Iceland Kasia joined us to be a glacier guide in the summer 2022 and later she moved over to our office team where she shares her knowledge about our tours and Iceland from the guide’s persepctive. In 2023 she decided to head off back to the glacier!

Damian

Originally from Krakow, Poland, where he studied anthropology with a focus on the Middle East and Far East. A traveler and photographer who has hitchhiked across the Middle East, South Asia, Latin America, and Australia. In 2019, after his adventures in the land of kangaroos he moved to Iceland where he fell in love with the wild, pure nature and decided to stay longer. He finally turned his passion for mountaineering and the outdoors into a profession and became a glacier guide in 2021.

Barbara

Born under beautiful Slovak mountains called the High Tatras with an Italian father and Slovak mom.
Raised in the outdoors, skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing, horse riding and diving. Apart from mountaineering her closure to art makes her work on her music and singing career.
Her passion for travelling brought her to Iceland, where she fell in love with the nature and got dragged by glacier guiding.

Alexander

Alexander grew up surfing in San Diego before moving to Seattle for university where he started spending more time in the mountains. He loves to travel and has been to around 70 countries, as well as hike and camp as much as possible. Alexander moved to Iceland in 2017 after which he studied Icelandic and started as a glacier guide.

Kish

Kish is a British geologist who has worked in Western Australia’s mineral exploration industry and guided hikes and skippered iceberg tours in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. Since moving to Iceland in 2018 to guide on ice, Kish has dedicated himself full-time to gaining as much experience as possible as a Hard Ice & Cave Guide. Based in the rural district of Hornafjörður, he combines his geological background with a passion for adventure and glacier exploration, working to inform and inspire people to protect these vital ice formations from the effects of climate change. He also loves exploring canyons, whether on foot or by rope access, and now co-guides Iceland’s only canyoning tour below the Vatnajökull ice cap. Trail running, ice climbing, and skiing are other outdoor pursuits he enjoys.

Soffía Sóley

Soffía is originally from Garðabær but grew up traveling through most corners of Iceland. Her upbringing emphasized on the importance of understanding and respecting the nature we have around us and that stuck with her into her recreational and professional life.
Soffía has been skiing since she can remember. Ski racing, freeriding, backcountry skiing, ski instructing and guiding. One can say that it is one of her biggest passions in life. Her curiosity and imagination is what keeps her going in the mountains and drives her to explore new areas and aspects of being outdoors. She found her way into glacier guiding in 2022 and fell in love with the dynamic environment and continuously changing glaciers. In the winter you can find her in Chamonix, roaming around other glaciers and working as a ski instructor.

Arnaud

Born in Belgium and after a classic school curriculum concluded with studies in Geography, and originally becoming an air traffic controller, Arnaud could not resist the call of nature and its mountains any longer.
It was in 2010 that he decided to fully live his passion, and trade his radar screens for a life in the outdoors.
After having climbed the highest peak in every country in the American continent, while using his bicycle as a sole means of transportation, Arnaud ended his 3-years journey in Iceland, where he decided to rest his leathered buttocks and became a fully certified hard ice and alpine trekking guide through the Association of Icelandic Mountain guides.
His passion and his love for guiding have brought him across the four corners of the globe, his mountaineering experience helped him to summit numerous mountains or to successfully cross all the largest Icelandic glaciers, as well as the Greenland Icecap several times, before completing his endorsement as a fully certified IPGA Polar Expedition Guide. Specialist in Patagonia, Iceland and Greenland, Arnaud’s main concern is to “spread happiness”.

Generous, tireless, sometimes funny, always smiling, Arnaud will make sure you’ll have a unique experience and enjoy nature as much as he does. Long after your return, you will still hear the echo of his unique mantra “I love my job”, blowing serenely in the wind.

Samantha

Sam is from Mexico. She came to Iceland to study at the university in 2017 and part of the program took place on the glaciers. She loved the ice and mountains so she became a glacier guide. Through out the years she has had the privilege to guide on different outlet glaciers coming down from the ice cap and enjoy all the different seasons outside. When she is not at work you’ll find her outside with friends, out for a run or baking something yummy at home.

Jan

Thru-hiker, mountaineer, and outdoor enthusiast from Czech Republic who spent quite a bit of time in Scotland and other places. I love longer trips—sometimes living in a tent for several months at a time, and crossing a few countries on foot or by bike.