This was primarily a sightseeing/photo trip but since Iceland Air allows 2 full-size pieces of luggage (yeah!) why not bring our wings?
Description of all the awesome landscapes, waterfalls, fjords, volcanoes, hot springs, puffins, guillemots, bird cliffs, lambs and horses will be in a different place; here just a short account of our flying activities.
First flying stop was Vik where we met up with Grampa Dave, a Pemby (or rather: international) pilot. He and his Vik pilot friends welcomed us warmly with a party until 2:30 AM – rather hard to know when to go to bed when it doesn’t get dark - and introduced us to one of their local flying sites, the cliffs above a group of sea stacks called Reynisdrangar. There we enjoyed a long ridge soaring session above countless nesting fulmar birds and similarly countless tourists.
Iceland’s landscape looks like a dreamland for paragliding but many of the great-looking hills and ridges line up the wrong direction and the wind is 90 degrees cross to the take-off. Not a big surprise considering how winds should behave in a fjord and most of Iceland’s coastline is made up of fjords. In addition winds were often much too strong and gusty for flying and changed in a hurry.
We had another sweet ridge soaring session in the desert/moonscape along the northern ring road between Egilsstadir and Lake Myvatn and also got the wings out for a short hike & sledride, a low dune soaring session and some kiting. So one could almost call it a flying trip!
While Iceland wouldn’t be first on my list for a paragliding holiday; getting in the air above some of the amazing sights was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. There is a cool app/online site for wind directions and flying sites (http://hopp.la/ice/) but beware, the wind speeds are in m/s. For km/h multiply by 3.6 .
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| Flying near Vik |
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| Along the northern Ring Road |
