Turns out the East and Southeast areas of Iceland have the best weather. We enjoyed two days of clear sunny skies. The weather is like clockwork: 06:00 clear sunny skies, 12:00 light sprinkle, 14:00 reach the high (48F) of the day, 20:00/21:00 some clouds start rolling in and the sun starts dropping, 01:00 high winds pick up, 03:00 storm rolls in and rain starts dumping.
With the high winds, rain, and morning sheep call nights aren't always the most peaceful.
It was hard climbing. Everything is basalt rock that rips at your hands, not to mention the strong seaside winds. The F.A. climbers are mainly 6 ft+ Scandinavians who are super strong and powerful. They're used to bouldering and it is evident in their routes. All the routes are under graded, a 5'6=5'7b, 5'9a=5'10c and so forth. It took a few leads to get warmed up, especially since we'd been in a car for so long, but once we got a feel for the rock the climbing was RAD.
We took the mountain RTE 917 to the east coast and followed the fjords. We passed Batman mountain, saw a seaside Viking village in Höfn, climbed on some seaside rock stacks, saw glaciers that stretched to the sea and farms that sat at the base of them, and made it to the main climbing spot Hvannadalshnjúkur.
Drove through Akureyri, saw huge trolls, nature pools, sheep herders, drove through mountainous valleys, explored volcanic country, made camp outside of geothermal hub Mývatn, had some good Icelandic butter, and lawn bowled through the night.
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