From April to September we take you on small group glacier hikes to Vatnajökull National Park. Our favorite glacier outlet for an adventurous but family friendly hike is Falljökull. 

Pack your outdoor clothes and a light backpack for some layers and sunglasses and head to the southeast of Iceland!

All our tours in the summertime start at Freysnes service station. You can leave your car behind and jump into one of our super jeeps. On the short drive you can enjoy a view of Hvannadalshnjúkur, Iceland’s highest peak, rising up at 2,110m tall, right until we dip deeper into the Falljökull valley.

We drive as far as we can into the valley along an old sheep track that was put in by the local farmers, before the area was made into a national park. The track is still in use today to round up all the sheep that call the valley home during the summer, during the annual réttir. Our super jeep makes light work of the rough terrain so that we arrive at the edge of the glacier in no time. We care about our environment and therefore offset all our carbon footprints – who knows maybe there will be electric super jeeps soon?!

Our guides have all equipment to keep you safe and help you into harness and crampons. With a helmet on your head and an ice ax in your hand we can start our summer glacier adventure. Crossing through the rocks the glacier has left we take the hill to get up onto the ice. You will take your first steps on Vatnajökull ice that is hundreds of years old. It doesn‘t take long to get used to crampons underneath your feet but the sound of crunchy ice never gets old.

The Glacier Encounter is a gentle hike on the lower, flatter section with a view of the icefall from below. This hike weaves in and out of the relaxed waves where the crevasses flatten out again and explores lots of interesting features, vertical walls, deep moulins and lots of streams to drink from! You can expect a physically easy, but action-packed hour on the ice itself. The Glacier Encounter is the perfect choice if you are looking for an easy glacier hike in Iceland or a kid friendly glacier hike. You might even get to meet the inhabitants of Falljökull – glacier mice. Some might be relieved to hear they are not real mice but they are for sure special since you can only find them in a few places on earth and Faljökull is one of them!

In this lower section of the glacier we also come across something very characteristic of Icelandic glaciers – the volcanic ash. We see it collected in small, volcano-like cones and in great streaks across the surface. Falljökull sits beneath Öræfajökull, the ´wasteland´ volcano that is one of just a few local volcanoes under Vatnajökull and in Iceland. With the ash blowing on Iceland´s high winds, it spreads across the islands and glaciers quite easily. During a glacier walk in Iceland you will truly experience the land of fire and ice.

The Glacier Discovery takes you on a longer expedition to make full use of your three hours on the ice, navigating up through the cracks and waves to the base of the icefall. Up here, the ice is moving faster and the ash is dropping into the crevasses and getting washed down the glacier by the streams. We emerge up on a second plateau and choose our path around the edges of crevasses and moulins, where we can look down into the deep blue interior of the ice. Heading up into the seracs gives us an overview all the over the glacier lagoon to the ocean. Even on a rainy day the moody clouds make for the perfect backdrop of the high ice pillars of the ice fall. It’s hard to do the same tour twice up here because there are endless changing features to explore, but that’s the beauty of such a unique experience in nature. Our Glacier Discovery is a small group activity off the beaten path.

If you are looking for an even smaller group glacier hike in Iceland we organize private tours. A guide just for your family with smaller children, your group of friends that want to try ice climbing or a proposal on the ice. Let’s find the perfect glacier adventure for you in the southeast of Iceland.