Iceland has been erupting on and off since 2021, and by the summer of 2026 the Reykjanes peninsula had become so accustomed to its own volatility that the eruptions barely made the international news anymore. The locals had a word for it — a shrug, essentially, delivered with the particular Icelandic composure that treats geological upheaval as a minor scheduling inconvenience. I did not have this composure. I was standing on the Laugavegur trail on day four of a solo seven-day crossing when the sky to the south went orange, and I had to remind myself, quite firmly, that this was not my emergency.
The Laugavegur is 55 kilometres of trail through the Icelandic highlands, running from Landmannalaugar in the north to Thorsmork in the south. It crosses four distinct landscapes — the rhyolite mountains around Landmannalaugar, the black sand desert of Jokultungur, the glacial river plains below Emstrur, and the green birch valleys approaching Thorsmork — and it does all of this in a country where the weather can cycle through four seasons in a single afternoon. It is consistently ranked among the world's great long-distance trails. It deserves the ranking.
I had done it once before, in a group of six, with a guide, in 2019. That trip was excellent. This one I wanted to do alone, which is a different thing entirely. Solo trekking in Iceland is legal, reasonably safe if you are prepared, and strongly discouraged by the Icelandic Mountain Rescue teams who spend their summers extracting underprepared tourists from the highlands. I was prepared. I had registered my route with safetravel.is, carried a PLB, and packed for conditions significantly worse than the forecast. Iceland had rewarded this caution by providing conditions significantly worse than the forecast.
Landmannalaugar arrives like a hallucination. You come over a ridge of black lava and suddenly the mountains are pink and green and yellow — rhyolite, a volcanic rock that oxidises into colours that have no business existing in a landscape this austere. The geothermal hot spring at the hut is warm enough to swim in. I did, on the first evening, lying in water that smelled of sulphur with the mountains turning gold in the low northern sun, and thought: this is the correct way to begin a walk.
The hut was full — the Laugavegur huts book out months in advance in summer — but I had a tent pitch reserved and was glad of it. There is something clarifying about sleeping outside in Iceland in June, when the sky never fully darkens and the light at midnight is the colour of old gold. I lay in my sleeping bag at 11pm reading by the ambient glow through the tent fabric and felt, for the first time in months, entirely unhurried.
The first day of walking climbs immediately into the obsidian highlands above Landmannalaugar — a landscape of black glass and steam vents and snow that persists year-round in the hollows. The trail is well-marked with cairns and yellow poles, which is fortunate because in cloud, which is where I spent most of the morning, the visibility drops to fifty metres and the terrain all looks the same: black rock, white snow, grey sky.
The wind picked up at noon. Not Patagonian wind — I have been to Patagonia and I know what that feels like — but a sustained Icelandic gale that made the exposed ridge sections genuinely unpleasant. I put my head down and walked. The hut at Hrafntinnusker appeared out of the cloud at 3pm, orange against the grey, and I felt the particular relief of a shelter that has been earned.
Inside: twelve other trekkers, a gas stove, wet socks hanging from every available surface. The warden — a young Icelander named Sigrid who had the cheerful efficiency of someone who has seen every variety of weather-beaten tourist — made coffee and told us the forecast for the next three days. It was not encouraging. She said this with a smile that suggested she found our expressions entertaining.
Iceland had rewarded my careful preparation by providing conditions significantly worse than the forecast.
The descent from Hrafntinnusker to Alftavatn is one of the great descents in Icelandic trekking — a long, sweeping drop from the obsidian plateau into a wide green valley with a lake at its centre, the scale shifting dramatically as you lose altitude and the world opens up around you. In good weather it would be spectacular. In the rain and wind of day three it was a survival exercise conducted in spectacular scenery.
The river crossings start here. The Laugavegur has several unbridged river fords, and in June, when the snowmelt is running, they are thigh-deep and fast and cold enough to make your feet go numb in thirty seconds. The technique is to unbuckle your pack hipbelt — so you can shed the pack if you fall — find the widest, shallowest point, face upstream, and move sideways with your poles as outriggers. I crossed three rivers on day three. I fell in the third one. The water was 4 °C. I said several things that I will not reproduce here.
Day four was the day the volcano woke up. I was two hours out of Alftavatn, crossing the black sand desert of Jokultungur — a vast, flat plain of volcanic ash that feels like walking on the surface of another planet — when I noticed the light changing to the south. Not sunset: it was 2pm and the sun was behind me. A glow, orange and low, pulsing slightly at the horizon.
I checked my phone. The Vedurstofan — the Icelandic Meteorological Office — had issued an eruption alert for the Svartsengi system on the Reykjanes peninsula, 150 kilometres to the southwest. A new fissure had opened overnight. The eruption was not near the trail. There was no ash cloud, no gas hazard, no reason to alter my route. The alert was informational. I read it twice to make sure I had understood it correctly, then put my phone away and kept walking toward the orange horizon.
The glow intensified through the afternoon. By evening, from the hut at Emstrur, you could see it clearly — a smear of amber light on the southern horizon, the sky above it faintly lit, the glacier of Myrdalsjokull silhouetted in between. The other trekkers gathered outside the hut to watch. Nobody spoke much. There is not a great deal to say when the earth is reminding you of its own priorities.
Volcanic Hazard — Iceland
Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and experiences frequent eruptions, primarily on the Reykjanes peninsula and in the Eastern Volcanic Zone. Before trekking in the highlands, register your route at safetravel.is and download the 112 Iceland app, which provides real-time eruption and weather alerts. Check vedur.is for ash cloud forecasts before each day's walking. If an eruption occurs near your route, follow instructions from the Icelandic Mountain Rescue (ICE-SAR) — do not attempt to approach active fissures. Carry a PLB on all multi-day routes.
There is not a great deal to say when the earth is reminding you of its own priorities.
The last two days of the Laugavegur are the most beautiful. The trail drops from the highland plateau into the Markarfljot canyon — a gorge of extraordinary depth and colour, the river far below, the walls striped in black and red and orange volcanic strata — and then climbs again into the birch scrub above Thorsmork. The birch trees are small and wind-bent and very green, and after four days of black sand and obsidian they look almost impossibly alive.
I walked the last section alone. The other trekkers had either pushed ahead or fallen behind, and for three hours I had the trail to myself — the canyon, the river, the birch trees, the eruption glow still faintly visible to the south even in daylight. I stopped on a ridge above Thorsmork and looked back the way I had come. The highlands were clear for the first time all week, the rhyolite mountains of Landmannalaugar visible as a smudge of colour on the northern horizon, fifty-five kilometres away.
Solo trekking is different from group trekking in ways that are difficult to articulate without sounding either self-congratulatory or melodramatic. It is not braver. It is not more authentic. It is simply more direct — the landscape arrives without mediation, the decisions are entirely yours, the silences belong to you alone. There is no one to share the eruption glow with, which means there is also no one to dilute it. You carry the whole thing yourself. This is both the cost and the point.
I reached the Thorsmork hut at 4pm on day seven. I ate an entire pot of pasta and half a bar of dark chocolate and sat outside in the evening sun watching the glacier on the ridge above. The eruption was still going. The sky to the south was still faintly orange. Iceland was still doing what Iceland does.
I had a bus to catch in the morning. I was already thinking about coming back.
A Note on Going Alone
People ask whether it is safe to solo trek in Iceland. The honest answer is: it depends entirely on your preparation. The Laugavegur is a well-marked, well-huted trail with a rescue service that is genuinely excellent. If you register your route, carry appropriate emergency equipment, check the weather daily, and have the sense to turn back when conditions deteriorate beyond your ability to manage them, the risk is manageable. If you do none of these things, the Icelandic highlands will find you out. The mountain rescue statistics are instructive.
The eruption added nothing to my personal risk. It was 150 kilometres away and moving in the wrong direction for ash fall. What it added was something harder to name — a reminder that the landscape I was walking through was not a backdrop but an active system, still making itself, still in the process of becoming whatever Iceland is going to be next. The trail crosses lava fields that are less than a thousand years old. The mountains are still rising. The glaciers are retreating. Everything is in motion, on timescales that make a seven-day walk feel like a single breath.
I find this comforting, for reasons I cannot fully explain. The world is larger and older and more indifferent than our concerns. Walking through it, alone, in the light that never quite goes dark, with a volcano glowing on the horizon — this is not an escape from ordinary life. It is a recalibration of it.
Saoirse Brennan
Contributing Writer
Saoirse Brennan is a writer and solo trekker from Dublin. She has completed long-distance trails in Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and New Zealand, and writes about the particular quality of attention that solo travel demands. The Laugavegur is her favourite trail in Europe. She has now walked it three times and intends to walk it again.
