For the past few years I’ve been leading an extraordinary Photo Expedition in Iceland. I travel with a very small group – between 7 and 9 people, and we focus our energy on, you guessed it, finding and photographing the most beautiful sights in Iceland. One of our excursions during the 15-16 day adventure is flying over the Braided Riverbeds on the south coast if Iceland.
Nearby Skaftafell, the largest ice sheet in the country, Vatnajokull, there is a vast expanse of black sand that has been deposited along the coast by millennia of “Glacial Outburst Floods” or eruptions under the ice sheet. The rapid cooling of lava and melting of glacial ice creates these fast moving and expansive bursts of water carrying ash, rock, tephra, ice, and anything in it’s path towards the ocean. The most recent sizable glacial outburst flood was in 1996 when a sub-glacial eruption at the central volcano Grimsvotn. This eruption triggered a days-long melting event that temporarily increased water flows to equivalent and greater than that of the Mississippi River in North America (up to 24,000 m³/s). The powerful flood brought volcanic debris and ice over 15km from the source and spread wide and far across the largest glacial out-wash plain / sandur in the world: Skeiðarársandur.
We access the area by small plane – a Cessna 207 with seats for five and a few windows that can open. Our pilots know the area well and help us get the best elevation and angles for photography. It’s a great experience.