Hotel Skaftafell is located 5 km away from the National Park in Skaftafell and close to the best glaciers to go hiking on.
In Skaftafell you can find at least 3 companies who offer glacier walks, some just glacier walks and othes with a twist like ice caves, ice climbing, adventure-themed and more.
These companies are Troll Expeditions, Icelandic Mountain Guides and Glacier Guides and they are all professional and good companies who do there best to make their customers experience memorable.
Local Guide is a local company that offers glacier hikes in summer and winter, their pick up place for costumers is at the Gas Station in front of our hotel. They know the area better than anyone else 🙂
Now being a glacier guide myself and now a hotel manager, I want to share my experience of glaciers and also when you witness people experiencing being on a glacier for the first time. I love meeting hotel guests in the lobby coming from a glacier hike on cloud nine and have a discussion about the experience.
The first time I went on a glacier walk, was the year I turned 19 years old. I loved it but did not go again until I was 40 years old and then as a guide, going with a group, but of course with a glacier guide as well. At 40 years old I fell in love, with glaciers. After 20 years of studying, raising 3 kids, buying a house, getting married, having a career and running like a hamster on a treadmill, I found this awesome feeling of being small and calm, at the same time.
Listening to the running water everywhere, walking on crampons, breathing in oxygen that is better then other oxygen for some reason, your brain trying to process all that beauty of the blue ice forming into waves of crevasses that he forgets to think about that thing you had to do that day or that email you need to answer.
If you are lucky you can hear the glacier crack and break and then go from being small to tiny. The first 20 minutes on the crampons are always a little weird but then you feel like Micheal J. Fox on a hoverboard in Back to the Future (you who are too young to remember those movies, google it).
After 2 hours roaming around, drinking the glacier water, eating the glacier ice (which is more than 700 years old), having your endorphins on a glacier high you are ready to give up electricity just to stop global warming and save our glaciers.
Now you wanted to know how I experience people experiencing a glacier for the first time? The same, because every time I go glacier hiking, it gives me the same feeling like it is my first time. So come visit us and have this experience of a lifetime. We will take good care of you.
I deeply and truly recommend you try a glacier hike and be a privileged person in the future, who has a picture of themselves on a glacier because if they keep on decreasing this fast like they have the last 20 years, in 200 years there will be no glaciers in Iceland. Hopefully, by then, we will have a time machine DeLorean like Marty McFly and DocBrown, because nothing I have tried so far gives me the same feel-good feeling like hiking on a glacier does.