Last week I decided to climb Esjan, the mountain that dominates the view to north in Reykjavík. The morning arrived foggy but around eight o'clock it seemed to be clearing out a little in Breiðholt so I decided to go try just the same.
(Everything white in this photo should in reality be the side of the mountain.)
Early morning dew.
Esja was, to put it bluntly, in a cloud. I thought to try to see how far I could get and promised myself I would turn back immediately if things began to look bad.
At first the fog didn't bother me too much. The beginning of the route is fairly easy to climb, it's well marked and the mist wasn't too bad.
It began to grow steadily worse the further I got, though.
This photo is taken near the second or the third stop on the way. At this point I was imagining shapes into the mist for the fun of it, trying to scare myself. What I didn't take into consideration was that it's really easy to imagine shapes into mist and that I scare easily...
More dew on flowers. A very pretty colour variation of lupin, typically you only see the blue-purple kind over here.
Another thing that fog does is that all sounds become weird. For a long while I was almost certain there were footsteps very near, following me up the mountain... until I realized that the sound was actually just water in my waterbottle, sloshing in unison with my own footsteps.
A holtasóley.
In the end I only got halfway up the mountain. This photo is taken near third stop where the vision was rapidly growing worse, and at the fourth it was absolute cloud, impossible to see through. From there on the road is not well marked so I turned to return - I wasn't going to risk it alone in blind fog on a mountain I've climbed only once before.
Oh well. It just means I'm going there again in a better weather.
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