The Laugavegur trek we abandoned

The plan was to walk the Laugavegur, Iceland's most famous trek, over a few days. We did not finish it, but we got more than halfway. And it remains one of my favourite failures.

We were students, our planning was rough, and our first mistake was packing for a siege: tent, food, water and far too much else, all of it on our backs because we had not thought to leave anything in town. A 4WD bus carried us deep into the Thorsmork valley, leaning and lurching as it forded river after river that smaller cars could not cross, and dropped us at the start around midday. From there it was just us, the canyons, and the emptiness.

The walking was glorious and the streams were brutal: shoes off, wade in, gasp at water cold enough to hurt, shoes on, repeat. This was before phones were any use, so we navigated off a paper map, which got steadily harder as the trail vanished under snow and we found ourselves breaking our own path across it. The saving grace was the light. There was no night, just endless dusk, so we simply kept going, and slept a few hours at a snowbound hut where another couple shared their wine.

The next day the mountain made the decision for us. We climbed into a stretch where sulphur smoke rose through deep snow and the ground felt untrustworthy underfoot, one bad step from a serious fall. We turned around. Sometimes finishing is not the point. Getting back down safely, with a story and a reason to return, is.