eldgós uppkominn
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

04::November::2004 13:54 → permalink

The future belongs to portent, as on the night that the first Gulf War started back in 1991, when Hekla vomited back what the US military throwing at the earth in the Gulf region; so, as on the eve of the unfortunate re-election of the Bush Regime, Grímsvötn in the middle of Vatnajökull feels intense gastric distress about future warring and earth-raping, and belches in protest: so it goes. This is the same volcano that caused the massive and catastrophic flooding in the fall of 1996, when the sub-glacial lake of the same name located in a large caldera breached its banks and sent a huge volume of water blasting out under the glacier, coming to the edge at and blowing out a 2 km wide chunk of Skeitharárjökull, cutting a 1 km wide swath through a terminal moraine that stands about 200 meters high and a kilometer across. This flood left giant pieces of glacier ice, some the size of large apartment blocks scattered across the jet-black expanse of the sandur (out-wash plain). And took out 15 km of the national ring road. All in 5 minutes. There’s the story of the local policeman from the town Vík nearby the glacier who had gone out on early morning patrol on the ring road, and forgot his coffee thermos, right after he turned around to get it, he saw the flood in his rear-view mirror. Thank god for caffeine-addiction! MB, Loki, and I cruised through the region and jeep up to the glacier face in the early spring of 1997 where I shot quite a bit of material. Good thing, as all those huge chunks of ice were completely melted before the tourists arrived that summer. Quite an incredible sight though.

 → comment
→ cats:: travelog
→ tags:: , , , , , , , , , ,
no comments yet...

comments closed