We woke early to perfect weather, clear and still, and the whole week of waiting was worth it in one look at the sky. This was the day we had held out for.

The camp was already moving when we got up. The hard-core hikers, the ones doing the long multi-day trek to Þórsmörk, were packing their tents, eating breakfast, loading up, and heading off down the trail with everything on their backs. The ones left behind were the day hikers like us. The tourists on super jeeps would come later in the morning.

We took Bláhnúkur first, the blue peak, and the first stretch is tough. It climbs about three hundred metres straight up from the camp, and it does not ease you into it. The peak stands at nine hundred and forty-five metres. What looked like the summit turned out not to be. There was another one hidden behind the first, and we made it to the true top.

The view from up there is worth the climb. It runs a full circle. Below and around you the rhyolite mountains spread out in their colours, red and orange and green and grey, the black lava field to one side, the ice of the far glaciers on the horizon, and the whole tangle of peaks and valleys that make up this corner of the highlands. On a clear day you can see a long way, and this was a clear day.

Then we went down the far side, a much gentler slope, which brought us round toward the loop for Brennisteinsalda. Before we got there we had to cross a river on foot. It was not big, but finding a spot to get over without soaking our boots and socks took some time and some looking, hopping rocks and picking the line. We stopped for lunch just after, before we met the first hikers coming the other way, down from Brennisteinsalda.

This side is where the ground is alive. There are fumaroles, vents in the earth putting up steam, and the smell of sulphur comes with them. The name Brennisteinsalda means sulphur wave, for the yellow that streaks the mountain, along with the red of iron and the green of moss on the rhyolite. The trail runs along the edge of Laugahraun, the lava field from an eruption around 1477, black broken rock still sitting where it cooled.

Where our trail met the Laugahraun path the traffic picked up, the day visitors out for the short flat walk across the lava field and back, the easy one that does not climb. We had come down into it from the other direction, off the mountains.

We wrapped up in good time, with the weather still holding, and spent the rest of it on some truck chores and a soak, just our feet, in the warm water of a spring by the camp.