The East Glacial River is a blast to raft and pumps just big enough to give kayakers a run for their money too. It is one of the best rivers in Europe and definitely one of the most technically challenging. My company, Activity Tours, offers a three day trip on the East which is the only overnight raft trip available in Europe. Three days ago fifteen Russians showed up for this, our third trip down the entire Austari-Jökulsá, as it´s known in Icelandic.

We´ve been anticipating these Russkies for weeks, expecting a liver workout with endless vodka shots. Yes, they bring plenty of vodka, but these super rich folks from Moscow and Petersburg seem to have developed more of a taste for whiskey, good whiskey, which is thankfully more down my alley. They don´t mind sharing either.

On the first day we drive up to the hut in the interior of Iceland. Once we get out of the valley and on the top the terrain goes completely lunar. There are no plants, only rocks and crisscrossing streams that our fearless driver Valdi charges through without hesitation. The hut overlooks a large hot spring where you can soak, enjoy a beer, and gaze out on the massive Hofsjökull glacier, the source of our river adventure.

Then Anil Gets Wasted

There is one caretaker, the warden, who stays at the hut for two months straight during the summer. He´s over to start chatting the moment we arrive. You can see the cabin fever in his eyes. After dinner all us guides head to the hot pot with beer and wine in tow. The warden is there too.

“You need a beer?” he asks. “I´ve got a lot of beer. One more month´s worth.”

“Thanks.”

“I´ve got lots of weed and mushrooms too.” Of course he does. I wonder how many trolls and elves he´s met up here walking the rock fields high on shrooms.

I go to bed at 3am. The next day is long and I want to be fresh. When I wake up at 7, Anil, the Nepalese bulldog is stumbling into the kitchen with his swim trunks falling down his waist. Anil´s the cook so I assume he´s coming in to start breakfast.

“Where did you sleep?” I ask. He obviously thinks I ask where are you going to sleep because he points to the kitchen floor with a queasy smirk and passes out in a naked heap, grunting and farting while the rest of us guides exchange uneasy glances.

Anil and the warden spent the whole night in the hot pot getting drunk and stoned and eventually fighting.

“He held me under the water so long time,” recounts Anil, slurring his words. “Not under like this,” he puts his hands on my head, “but like this.” He grabs my neck and starts to squeeze.

“I get it, I get it.” It got hot in the hot pot.

This isn´t the best start to our trip. Not only is Anil the head cook, he is also the gear boat guide. There are 22 people total on the trip and all the gear must be loaded on one 14 foot Avon raft. We were worried about keeping the Russians on schedule, but Anil is now the anchor weighing us down. He sleeps through breakfast and takes forever to load the gear boat which is a beast. The dry bags are super heavy, filled with bottles of whisky and port as we later learn.

The Wrap

After 45 minutes of rafting on “the moon” atop the chalky glacial waters the river´s banks grow steeper and the fun begins. What follows is three hours of continuous class 3 drops and boulder gardens. Me and Karu are having a blast in our kayaks, and so are the three paddle boats, but Anil is in hell as his drunk descends to hangover and he tries to maneuver the behemoth through the maze of rocks. At one point I watch him pull and pull on the oars as he watches the approaching rock he´s about to get parked on. The boat does nothing and he´s stuck there for a half hour in the middle of the river. There is nothing I can do.

Thirty minutes later we´re waiting for him again when an oar floats by, then a dry bag, then lunch. Something has happened upstream. It turns out to be the worst wrapped boat we´ve seen. It´s completely submerged, all tubes, and there is a rock that the whole thing is pressed up against. The rock start the problem, but how it managed to essentially sink an air-filled raft is beyond me.  It´s hard to picture how it happened but it did. It takes four hours to get off.

We don´t get to our next hut until 9:30 without stopping for lunch which is now fishfood. We are hungry and cold but the Russian are good sports and are happy with the deli sandwiches (tomorrow´s lunch) and lots of booze. The dry bags were overpacked and many peoples´ things are wet. Most of the dry bags were submerged in fast moving current for four hours so sleeping bags, clothes, and even cameras are wet. It hurt to see a Canon SLR camera in the garbage the next day. But they still don´t seem to mind. Some relish the adventure we shared and this makes me happy. Of all the things that can go wrong on a river, a wrap is the most frustrating. To get a boat unstuck you need lots of muscle and time, a tedious, exhausting process. After a couple of vodka shots (half a cup each) and we pass out.

(After the wrap day)

A Great End

The next day we run our regular East Glacial run minus the gear. We have a van come pick it up at our normal put-in.

At night we gather at the company´s beautiful summer cabins and enjoy a hot pot soak and dinner. Maggie, the boss and owner has bought us some Icelandic delicacies, hákarl, which is putrefied shark, and brennevin, Icelandic schnapps. It´s nickname is “the black death”. This is a memorable albeit disgusting way to kick off our party that goes well into the night.

Two girls get out of the car and introduce themselves.  I´ve given up on Icelandic names already and tap people on the shoulder if I want to talk to them. 

“You want to go to Blonduos for a party?”  You´re damn right I do.

We drive an hour skulling beers and possibly vodka through Iceland´s rocky, sunny scenery and arrive at this so called party.  It´s more like a shitty band in a high school gymnasium and costs 3,000kronur to get in.  That´s $50!  I´m not paying $50 to get into anything.  Chris goes in ands scouts out the sneak in possibilities.  Through a stroke of luck we all happened to have taken the bouncers rafting the previous week.

“Can you let me and some friends in?” asks Chris.

“How many?”

“Like…eight?”

“No problem!” 

The girls who drove us are pissed because they just forked out the 3,000kr.

The band was such complete crap that if I had paid to get in I think I might have murdered the lead singer in my drunken rage.  This is pretty much how the rest of the night went:

I´m okay, I´m okay.

  

“You don´t need gloves man, you´re a viking!” Oh right. He looks reassured but only for a moment. I stop short of saying “and you´re still drunk” but I know the alcohol isn´t going to keep him warm at all. It might make him puke once he hits the ice cold water though.

This is a trend here on the river. Despite the ridiculously high alcohol prices Icelanders still love to get wasted. And in turn we love to take them out into the glacial waters and waste them all over again. On this particular day we´re taking the 10-11 crew, as in 10am to 11pm, from the northern city of Akureyri. 10-11 is a supermarket and judging from the name all this drinking has made people a little lazy. The 7-11 thing doesn´t fly in a country known for its wicked hangovers.

The trip turns out to be a fiasco. Flips galore, lots of swimmers, and panic, panic, panic. One of the rather large ladies spent most of the trip screaming down the rapids like she was about to die. She actually was because I wanted to kill her.

When we get back to the bus she insists on hocking up a huge loogy that she swears came out of her lungs.

Generally Icelandic customers are awesome. I don´t mind the hangovers or canceled trips. They are energetic, gung-ho, hard paddling folks that can come in my boat anytime.