Blamannshattur, Iceland

[jmarkb]

This turned out to be the last day's walking of our week in Iceland. Blamannshattur (the blue mans's hat) is the highest and one of only a few easily accessible summits in the group of mountains on the east side of Eyjafjörður (the rest are not technical, just a long way from any roads, or defended by river crossings). The route starts at Skarð in Fnjoskadalur: there is a path which goes up through the fields on the west side of the farm and then through some scrubby birch trees to the foot of the SE ridge, where it abruptly vanishes (or so it seems)! The route given in this book http://shopicelandic.com/en/store/summit-100-mountain-hikes-in-iceland is confusing: the text suggests going further up the valley, but the sketch map shows the route going straight up the ridge. After some dithering, we chose the ridge, which consists mostly of steep loose scree, and is a bit of a grind Eventually the angle eases and great views over the fjord open out. Then there's about 3km of summit plateau to traverse to reach the highest point, and it's all very stony ground. A final patch of snow came as something of a relief! The summit had excellent views, though.

We wanted to find a better route down, so we descended a ridge east from near the summit, then dropped down snow into a wide coire. We were then able to easily contour round the east side of the mountain, slowly losing height, and finally picking up the path we had missed on the way up. (It meets the ridge low down at little shelf, but is not at all obvious when going up).

Route:

Online map: http://ja.is/kort/?type=map&x=545792&y=602296&z=6


Fnjoskadalur


On the ridge. Lots of scree!


Eyjafjörður and the Tröllaskagi mountains


Akureyri and Kerling


Stones. Lots of stones. Did I mention the stones?


On the summit


Looking north


Kaldbakur and neighbours


Kambsmyrahnjukur


Down the coire




Kerling (highest summit in Tröllaskagi at 1536m: one for another trip!)




Blamannshattur from Ytri-vik


Sunset over Eyjafjörður

[johnkaysleftleg]

Certainly looked like hard work! Great photos throughout but that last pic is beautiful. Very interesting set of reports as I would love to visit Iceland one day.

[Sarah86]

Again, lovely to see differfent parts of the world. Your shot of the sunset over Eyjafjörður is beautiful

[ChrisW]

Great finale to a wonderful week Mark, I know how you feel with all that scree, something we have plenty of out here Beautiful shots of Iceland throughout these reports but you certainly saved the best till last with these

[jmarkb]

Thanks for all your kind comments, folks, on this and the other reports. If anyone would like more details to help plan a trip, please just ask!