Dennis with son Christopher on the summit of Iceland's highest mountain, Hvannadalshnúkur
For nearly a decade I had planned to climb to the top of Icelands tallest mountain. I brought the maps and guide books back in the 90’s. One thing or another seemed to be more important. However, in the summer of 2006 the summit of Hvannadalshnúkur, was finally reached.
At 2,119m it is not a particularly high mountain, but to reach it climbers have to traverse the Vatnajökull glacier. The third largest glacier in the world after Antarctica and the Greenland icecap.
We travelled to Iceland in the summer of 2005 and 2006 with the aim to climb to the top of Icelands highest mountain. It took three attemps (2 in 2005 and 1 in 2006) to finally make the summit.
In 2005 Tom Simmons and I were prevented from making the final push for the top by white-out conditions. It was impossible to make out the route to the summit plateau. We had several attempts, but on each occasion we encountered a deep crevasse, which prevented further travel. Reluctantly we postponed the attempt until another time. Paradoxically, on one occasion the weather cleared as we descended off the glacier, but by then it was too late to make another assult.
In 2006 Tom was not available to climb so my son, Christopher was literally roped into climbing with me. This was Chris’s first big ice climb and he managed the difficulties remarkably well for a 15 year old.
As well as climbing we took the opportunity to explore this land of fire and water. Some of our photo’s are posted on the next page.