Bikepacking Iceland Part 2…..ummm, Hike-A-Bike and Running Out Of Water???

Just when we thought this Bikepacking Iceland trip couldn’t get any more extreme, we hit a major sand section on day 3. Of course we aired down our tires which allowed us to ride some of the sections, but it was a long stretch and we ended up resorting to hike-a-bike in some places.

Finally, in this episode we get into the meat and potatoes of Iceland and start out on our almost 1000km journey. From water crossings, sand, rock, glaciers, and volcanos, we get to experience everything Iceland has to offer and then some, and all by bike of course.

Riders: @adammorka, @chrisburkard, @ericbatty

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How are you feeling chris i’m super tired let’s be honest i’m tired i could use like eight hours more sleep but maybe that’ll happen today I’m ripping all your photos every time you close the camera i’ll be like that’s the angle i’m gonna this vlog is gonna be So we’re kind of double backing on ourselves the way we came in on the road just a few minutes ago is what we have to climb i think it’s a 600 meter climb but to start the whole trip we’re going out to the coast to line so we’re

Getting a drive out to the coast which is 35 kilometers that way get dropped off and then ride back the way we’ve just driven so the guys are proposing that we get that drive now tonight ride back stay here and then carry on from the lake here up the mountains tomorrow

Whether it happens there i’m like that’s kind of why i’m i don’t know it’s only 6 p.m and there’s like two and a half three hours of work to do but let the journey begin Okay it’s almost midnight and we’re still not packed there’s just so much last minute stuff it’s crazy we’re getting there but we’re not finished we leave it like leave at six o’clock oh there we go coffee pizza beer what’s your setup look like my beauty i’m just marking my saddle because the

Extra weight in case it flips i can see the micro micro changes i think i’m nervous all of a sudden only because of the weight that the guys are carrying we have to climb 600 meters from here the top of those mountains 600 meters right off the bat followed by another 600 meters

Fully loaded The furthest eastern point on iceland chris is excited let’s do it so we’re 20k in and eric has busted through his main dry sack on the top of the rack it’s split completely open we don’t have any spares on us so he does have one spare strap this is

Just gonna have to do this will have to do to get us fully cut open Let the adventures begin This is so incredible it’s super warm adam’s feeling down to just a jersey so we have now that climb Now at the top of our second climb which is actually pavement we’ve been about 20 kilometers with the water So we’re on this road now for a little more than 60 kilometers so we’re just gonna let some air out of our tires just to kind of take a little bit of the bumps because it’s pretty well uh washboards for the most part how’d it go today um oh today it was hard

Um it’s not something yeah i’ve never been on my bike that long it was like a mental uh overcoming bearer yeah my whole body is just fatigue it wasn’t just my legs my legs are actually quite fine it’s my shoulders and my neck and um my like lower back from just yeah my

Pack’s not the heaviest but 10 12 pounds on my back is is completely new um and then we had this this like out of water for way too long scenario kind of midway and i had a little bit left but the guys were completely out so

It’s kind of that like unknown if the next river was gonna be dried up like the last four had been so it was adventurous but we’re here and it’s it feels like we’re at altitude and it’s so pretty there’s an icelandic flag flagging behind us we’ve got the a-frame

Cabins to look forward to sleeping in tonight and we get to do it all again tomorrow but except tomorrow apparently it’s supposed to be much harder i’m kind of delirious i’m sure it all tastes good which ones did you go at uh pad thai and vegetables you’re doing two for sure

Yeah just to get rid of weight This is our cute little upstairs a frame cabin sleeping in combinations starting to get the adrenal puffy eyes we had an epic night at 3 a.m there was four alarms going off in the hut here in this oven there was a pot full of hamburgers i was setting all these alarms off and

All the little people in their house or in their rooms in the hut came running out in their underwear and like everyone’s panicking but we couldn’t find what was causing all the smoke or upstairs bedrooms full of smoke but like food burning smoke anyways they the hot dogs

Are sorry hamburgers i don’t know how long they’ve been in there probably like at least a few days but there were little prunes tripled up it was super sketchy so these actually were not uh they were not hamburgers they were cookies and this is what almost set the whole cabin on fire and

Smoked out the whole upstairs sweet Okay so there’s potentially no water at our fourth place to sleep so we have to pack every bit of water we can take on board so three liters on the back and then a 750 ml in my bottle all right guys here we go So if we have 10k of sand the consensus is to air down because we’ll spend less time pumping the tires back up though he will wasting crossing the sand slow going but kind of puts everything into perspective you can see a lot more all right so we’re nine kilometers into this 60

Kilometer hike bike and it’s actually quite warm we’re just gonna strip down take some layers off before we get super sweaty it feels really good What there’s a stove and everything Oh wow yeah sleeping quarters is not bad they’re like an icelandic spend the rest hello are you handing me chocolate yeah wow we’re eating like kings where’d all this food come from oh we only have six more chocolates left this is actually pretty good this is the

Um you doing pad thai adam shepard’s pie oh yeah from the happy yak so good mac and cheese tonight oh i should have i could do a mac and cheese too not bad we had the most amazing time on the bike today we rode through these massive

Sand you know 10 kilometer spans of beach we’re so small in this like massive massive landscape and it seemed like even though we were traveling at a pretty decent speed but on bikes we could you know change our whole entire view in a matter of like 20 minutes it was like

So we’re somewhere completely new i felt good on the bike today um it was a shorter day it’s funny how after 10 hours or 11 hours on the bike yesterday 10 hours sorry six and a half hours today seemed almost easy the second half of the of the ride was really really epic

Actually it was these round rocks so it’s just like this constant jarring on the on your upper body and your and your lower body so it’s not just your riding muscle group that you’re using it’s every muscle in your shoulders your neck your ribs your tricep like everything is being fired

To to ride kind of in a straight line with the weight on the bikes so that was really epic and just you know the group the five energy amongst the riders it’s it’s like we i know we you know eric adam and i we’ve known each other forever and we’ve trained together

Forever but it’s almost like we’ve known chris forever now too it’s so amazing like it’s such a a really good energy amongst the group and where we are i mean how could you not be so stoked look at this [Laughter] that’s actually a little scary We have a light layer of snow this morning it’s actually quite pretty we’re gonna wear an extra layer on our legs so i’m trying to look for a windbreaker that i have waterproof windbreaker but you know where it is oh no it’s right there i got my base layers

This is not your typical iceland mother All right we’re at camp number four this is the cutest little red roof huts incredible scenery even better weather and the hot tub is to die for i almost fell in the hole i did fall Number four is completed and it was a pretty good day i think my body is starting to kind of get into a nice rhythm the wind at the back half of this ride was a little bit stronger than the last few rides um i think we were on the bike for

Another eight eight and a half hours just around 100 kilometer mark you know we started out and we were obviously dressed to the nines i had all of our warm clothes on set out and then one mile down the road we’re already peeling layers off that’s a really crucial thing is

The minute you start to sweat the minute you are gonna freeze and so today was one of those days where everything was on and then everything was off and then we couldn’t stop taking pictures so there were a lot of stops on the first half of today’s

Big day uh the second half was more just wind and kind of like a deserty feel and so that is i think why my skin and my eyes feel so wind burned um but all in all it was a really good day and we’re staying at a fabulous cabin here

So yeah i’m super excited my lips are super chapped my nose is really chopped um and i’m really tired so i’m gonna go in and probably do as long of a foam roll session as i can before bed and then get a good night’s sleep because morning comes quick

Eric you look quite fresh for today Today’s another long windy bumpy day we’ve been riding half a mile first river crossing keep going oh booter so we’re forced to figure out how to get across this pretty rapid white deep river or go an extra 60 kilometers around on top of our potentially 130k

Day so we’re looking at you know more than 10 hours on the bike if we do that so we have to find a way you