Today we had a short ride up to the valley Reykjadalur (smokey valley), which starts just above the town that we are staying in (Hveragerði).

The trail climbed rapidly out of the lower country and steam could be seen coming out of the hill in different spots. At the top of the climb we saw into the Djúpagil gorge below with the Reykjadalsá river. We passed a waterfall as we entered the valley that held the hot springs feeding the river. At this point it is now more of a creek. Wading across the creek we found that the creek’s water was warm (a big contrast from other glacial rivers in the area).

In this area one does not wander off the trail. You could see steam all over the place, along with an occasional steaming, bubbling pools of mud. Our guide told us very simply that much of the ground is fragile and could break into one of these thermal pools - this would be pretty bad as these pools can over cook an egg before you could pull it back out. The instability of the ground became worse after a recent earthquake shuffled things around a bit.

We did a loop up above the cliffs of the Klambragil ravine which is the source of many hot springs into the river. On top we saw power lines stretching off into the distance along with a scattering of small white buildings. Turns out these are separate thermal generators tapping into all this energy.

Coming back down the loop was pretty interesting as part of the trail was basically loose mud on a very steep slope. After some interesting sliding, at the bottom it was time for a dip in the warm stream. In this case we joined quite a few people enjoying the sensation (public bathing in streams, pools, and hot tubs is very common it appears in this land of ice), while some horses went by. A nice way to close off a very pleasant hike for the day before returning for dinner in town.