On the third day we were in the Westfjords and had arrived at Hotel Flókalundur. The Westfjords are a rugged and remote part of Iceland that don’t see much tourist visitation. Part of the reason for that are the condition of the roads. While unpaved gravel roads make up 65% of Iceland overall, that percentage is much higher in the Westfjords. I knew ahead of time about the unpaved roads and determined to take them in stride. Slow down and pay close attention. One side of the road was up against the mountain the other was a drop off, sometimes gentle sometimes sheer. Total attention to driving safety was required.
Part of our usual dinner routine was to talk about upcoming events and locations. On this evening Nick and I discussed a visit to Rauðasandur (Red Beach) for midnight-sun photography. We checked the map and noted it was about 42 miles, one hour or so, to the west. The route included an unpaved gravel road into the beach area. I consulted umferdin.is, a website run by the Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration (IRCA), to learn conditions. It showed the road unpaved but listed it as “easily passable.” After dinner I stopped by the front desk and asked about the road to the beach. The clerk said she’d had been on the road the week before and that it was good to go. Armed with the intel, I gave the van keys to Nick, and we loaded up and left for Rauðasandur at about 2200. We were to travel along Highway 62, Highway 612 and Highway 614.
The drive along the coast to Rauðasandur was quite beautiful. As we had seen on Snæfellsnes, sheep were everywhere. In a tradition going back to Viking times, each year in May, 800,000ish sheep are set out to free range. They are everywhere! Private lands, public lands, standing in the middle of the street, in towns. They live off the land for about three or so months and then are collected. That process, called the Réttir, is in September. The entire country turns out to assist farmers and drive sheep to collection points where they are sorted back to their owners. It is a national-cultural event and a great excuse for a country-wide party. On my trip to Scotland two years ago I thought I had seen every sheep in the world. I was wrong.
As Highway 62 road turned NW into the mountains, and as we gained altitude, we moved into the low clouds sitting on the mountains. Between the fog and the late hour, it was quite a bit darker than we’d experienced on previous evenings. Not so dark we needed headlights but with the low visibility we were driving slowly and cautiously as we gained the necessary altitude to summit the pass and descend the other side towards Òsafjörður.
When we were again at sea-level, we turned west onto Highway 612, drove a few miles and came across a ship on a beach! The ship was Garðar BA-64, and she is Iceland’s oldest steel ship. Built in a Norway in 1912, she first served as a whaling ship in Norway before being traded through several countries over the years. She ended up in Iceland in 1950 where she continued whaling until restrictions on that industry caused her to become a herring fishing boat. Garðar BA 64 was retired in 1981.
After the ship-on-a-beach we gained a bit of elevation along the remainder of the drive to Highway 614. From Highway 614 to Rauðasandur is a six-mile drive up and over a mountain pass. And it is the drive down the backside of that pass that Nick and I still talk about.
Highway 614 is an unpaved dirt road and not an unpaved gravel road. The IRCA will argue with me on that point, but I think I know a red clay road when I drive on one. And, though the IRCA labels the road as “easily passable,” that term is defined by them as, “Non-slippery road surface or at least one wheel track free of ice in each lane and so little snow and ice on other parts of the road that drivers are not in danger.” Per that definition, they were correct. There was no snow or ice, so the road was passable. However, it was red clay, and it had been drizzling off and on throughout the day and we were in and out of the mist from the clouds hanging just overhead. A muddy dirt road can be as dangerous as a snowy/icy road. Nick was driving carefully and we discussed how to get a feel for the condition of the road surface. We didn’t seem to be skidding or sliding on turns so traction on the straight and level seemed okay. And although at the hour of our travel we didn’t expect any oncoming vehicles, the road was just wide enough to support two-way traffic. That said, like many roads on which we had traveled, there were no shoulders. This road was carved into the side of the mountains so one side was up against the mountain; the other side was an edge straight to the bottom. Sometimes there was a gentle slope on the exposed side, sometimes it was a steep, fatal drop. More importantly, there were no guardrails anywhere.
We topped the pass and started down a steep set of switchbacks. Each descent terminated in a 180-degree turn back in the other direction. The road wasn’t any wetter, but my head was flooded with thoughts of sliding off the end of the road into the nothingness. The lack of guardrails was as much a psychological terror as it was a very real danger. The view out the front windshield while descending was straight out into the sky. No land visible anywhere forward. Only visible to the side of the road against the mountain. One moment of inattentiveness would be disastrous. At one point I wanted to ask to turn around and quit the journey but there was no way to do that. I would never have attempted to turn around as there was not enough road to do so. And the road was much too steep and the turns to tight to back out. We were committed. The only bright thought I was able to muster was that folks drove this road all the time. At the bottom are a church, homes, vacation rentals. There were not a lot of people, but this was not the end of the world – although at nearly midnight, driving in and out of the clouds on a scary red clay road, it seemed like the end of the world. And to make matters worse, cell service was sketchy and I wasn’t sure Katharine had a real good idea exactly where we were. Certainly, she was still asleep for six hours or so more. It was a concerning place to be.
Eventually we reached the bottom of the mountain and the road leveled out. We followed the signs to the church, drove another mile or so, pulled over and stopped the car. We looked at each other and I said to Nick, “that was the scariest road I have ever been on.” As I reflect from my home office while writing this post, I still believe that was a true statement. We took a few photos of the church and of the clouds devouring the mountain tops. The beach area Nick sought was not on this end of the road. When we’d come down to sea level we turned right to the church when the beach area was to the left – not sure how many miles further. We talked about checking out the beach area but given the hour and given the fact we had to drive up and out the same road we’d just descended I said I wanted to go back to the hotel and Nick agreed.
The drive up and out was better only because the view out the front windshield showed the road and the mountain. It was just as steep, and the turns were just as tight, and I was just as concerned about traction and the lack of guardrails. We made small talk and just kept driving the six miles off that road. When we came to Highway 612 we both breathed a heavy sigh of relief. The worst was over, but we still had an hour of driving to return safely to Flókalundur. Small talk dominated the drive over mountain pass on Highway 62 as well as working our way through and by scores of sheep. Interestingly, most of the small talk was about sheep but it passed the time and we arrived safely back to the hotel about 0130.
Unspoken between us was the thought that we wouldn’t be too free with the details of the drive. We’d not said much about our harrowing climb at Lóndragar either. Best for a bit of time to pass before revealing too much about how uneasy we felt with our evening’s adventure. The drive to Rauðasandur falls squarely into the, “it will make a great story later” category.
Gaðar BA 64
