Do you ever get that feeling, where it’s like you’ve just stepped into an echo of the past? I do.
It happens to me a lot, especially as I get older; the result of my ever-increasing footprints, leaving memory markers all around the world that seem to “re-ignite” on future visits.
In cities, on top of mountains, even in some hotels and airports – I’m suddenly halted in my tracks as a thought of what’s been before in my life takes hold of my mind for a while. It could be a special occasion 10 years prior; the friends I was with on my last visit; even the music I was listening to at the time.
Of course, some of those memories are from places, buildings and structures that don’t exist any more.
But when, one day, you realise you’re stood in the same spot that was an ice cave buried deep inside Vatnajökull (Iceland’s largest glacier) a few years prior, only to find it’s now a wide open dry gravel field for as far as you can see – it focuses your mind and perspective on the changes that are occurring to our planet in quite an extraordinary way.
Exploring these incredible water-formed structures is something that is truly unique – there aren’t really the words to describe how intricate, delicate and incredible the tunnels are in real life once you’re seeing them with your own eyes from deep inside.
Photographing them is a complex endeavour – technically challenging, as you’re often not there alone and you need time to bracket and/or focus stack to get the best from the view – but also creatively frustrating as the images do, and yet don’t, reflect the truly awesome reality you’re faced with down there. In some ways the photographs look better than real life, in others, they don’t do it anywhere near enough justice.
Add in to that, the fact you’re very unlikely to find the same ice cave from one season to the next, and it’s a tapestry of unique images that can never be found again once taken.
So how do we visit them?
First off, you’re probably going to want a guide. You don’t have to take a guide – but you’ll likely want access to their knowledge, their modified super-jeep to get to the location, and their emergency equipment should anything go wrong.
You’ll be walking on sheet ice – the surface of Vatnajökull glacier in this case – so a good pair of quite offensive crampons is essential, and you’ll be enjoying some makeshift bridges, small tunnels and occasional rockfall to get there. (Hence the bright high-fashion helmets.)
For those that insist on going it alone (and we see them), be aware that over my many years of visiting these ice caves, in each and every case the weather has either started, or ended, with some form of wind, rain and low visibility out there on the glacier – so go careful, please.
When we first started exploring (many years ago now), there were only a handful of guides operating in the Jokulsarlon area – now there’s an army of them, with what feels like hundreds of super-jeeps cruising up and down towards the glacier front each day (no, the irony isn’t lost) as more and more tourists arrive with their special adventure in mind.
On arrival, you’ll find various types of construction as the guides each year find new access routes to new tunnels – from a temporary roof, to carved steps with rope-railings, to scaffold platforms inside allowing safe passage in certain areas.
But once you do make it inside, it’s fair to say the views are dialled up to 11.
Frozen ice rivers inside the cave (the remains of the source of the tunnel’s original formation) lead to pools of light as the ice thins out along the way – which in turn illuminate the crystal blue walls and deep black curves from where it’s been carved out of buried glacial ice from hundreds or thousands of years past.
The dynamic range in here can’t be overplayed – whether using your own eyes or a camera to take in the scene, the difference between the brightest areas and darkest parts of the tunnel are extreme; you can quickly move from needing a head-torch to sunglasses within 50m inside.
But the reward, as you walk through, getting closer to each surface and pattern, is nothing short of phenomenal.
Teaching people on our workshops inside this cave can be a challenge too – on the one hand, we’re there to take pictures, but on the other (and perhaps more importantly) I really want everyone to be present in the experience itself, right at that very moment.
And it’s not just visual – the soft cracking as ice shifts, the drips as tiny little water features form inside, the sound of the wind rushing through the tunnels – it’s all part of that memory that we’re hopefully building during those fleeting moments we spend within.
The guides (well, the right guides!) can be fantastic here too.
While you’re unlikely to have one of their discovered caves to yourself for the entire time, the guides do all work together to help each other and reduce the impact of other groups that are visiting – but don’t be thinking you’ll be on your own for the whole duration.
However, if you’re lucky (or go with the right people), you can get an hour or two, just to yourself.
So spend that time wisely – with your senses, but also with your camera (if shooting).
The structures are magnificent, unique, and challenging to capture in every direction you look.
“Blue” isn’t simple here – it could be cobalt, topaz, turquoise, sky, azure and any other label Pantone can think of as both the light and the ice structures change throughout the cavern.
And don’t stick to only the wide views – it’s those intricate details, reflections, and ice features that make these vignettes so intriguing as you visually explore them during your time inside.
Those helmets?
Well, inside the cave there’s always that risk of rockfall from above the glacier to create a potential risk – but don’t be surprised if you also have a close encounter with a rather spectacular icicle or two from the frozen water access points above.
Either way, do yourself a favour and keep the skid-lid firmly on your head.
And if you manage to avoid any cranial damage from them – those icicle formations really are quite something if you spend the time to study them for a while.
Again, don’t just take in the wide – get closer, zoom in, study the structures in detail; you won’t be disappointed.
As always, while it’s sometimes tough to remember in the moment, it’s so important to take a step back and look at not just the vista – at ground level – though tempting and awesome it can be.
Force yourself to look up, look around, twist your perspective and find patterns and features that catch both the light and your imagination as you step through the tunnels towards the exit point.
As you do get closer to an exit – you’ll find another shift of blue, this time more influenced by the weather and cloud outside in terms of its level of intensity (and challenge to capture as a result).
Bear in mind these caves are formed by water flowing into the glacier further up, running through and out into a terminal lake – and then think about those two holes in this shot below – formed separately but ultimately combined once enough run and melt occurs.
And what was that “out there” in the distance, viewed from just inside this unique ice cave?
That’s the infamous Jökulsárlón itself, Iceland’s incredible glacial river lagoon.
We’d walked out to the northern edge of the terminal lake, from within the glacier that feeds it with icebergs, to view it from the other side.
Looking across at the very front of the glacier’s end, it’s quite incredible to stand there and watch, hear, feel, the scale and power of this giant and iconic feature of the Icelandic landscape.
I said the varieties of blue were quite extensive, right…?
Oh, and as I often say – don’t ever forget to look behind you as you move within a scene. As you exit into the light – it really is true that half the world’s views are always sat right there in reverse.
So what caused my “echo”?
Well, all of the images you’ve seen above are from between 7-8 years ago. At the time, I remember being a little concerned that my GPS-tagged iPhone shots showed us well and truly “in” the glacier (by quite some distance) when in fact we were stood at the edge of it, on the terminus lake. It turns out, the satellite imagery was “already” (only!) 2 years old.
On previous trips, I hadn’t really delved that deep into the process of having to continually find these ice caves every year. But as I discovered more, I learned they have to, as the ones the guides find each season are gone by the next.
But while that process of water erosion creating these incredible structures is a natural one, the rate at which it’s happening now is far from normal.
Iceland’s glaciers are shrinking – and at an alarming rate.
So much so, back in 2019 they held a funeral as Iceland witnessed the complete loss of one of its smallest glaciers – Okjokull.
Flat-earthers and climate-change-deniers, this is your cue to exit.
Our world is heating up, our weather is becoming more eratic, our frozen water stores (that’s glaciers, icebergs, ice caps) are melting and sea levels (along with terminal lakes!) are rising.
Click through to Sky News micro-site.
Back to Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest glacier, and that front line is now receding by 100-200 meters each and every year.
For perspective – in the time between my shots above and the next series below (7 years on), it’s moved back by over 1km.
And if that was a middle-aged billionaire guy’s hairline, in comparison, I guarantee we’d have done more to stop by now… How sad.
So, fast-forward by those 7 years, and on this visit we’d head to a very different location (not entirely by choice, the other location was now a lake!)
Again, stepping out into “interesting” weather (driving rain and freezing wind) – we made our way across the top of the glacier.
Passing entrances to formations that other guides would take their groups, we made our way into what felt like a mix of ice cave and frozen slot canyon – a very different feel to those I’ve visited before.
Granted, it was a much greyer day of light and weather this time, but the cave itself was also a lot more imposing on first entry – inky black walls, accessed through a deep, dark, channel of steep steps.
But then, as with most of my experiences across Vatnajökull, things just somehow manage to “brighten up” along the way.
Getting to the first clearing, those pure crystal blues began to hit again, as we followed down guide-engineered ice steps into the chambers below.
For those worried about capturing in low light, tripods, space, focus stacking, HDR blending, and everything in between – as a bit of an experiment, I took out my iPhone.
For context, this was head-lamp territory in terms of available light – handheld, on my phone.
The textures on the wall just pop the second even the slightest fraction of daylight makes its way through either an opening in the surface above or by bouncing along the tunnel walls.
Seemingly perfect geometric shapes and lines start to fool you into thinking this has been somehow designed and “engineered” to plan – but the reality is even more impressive when we consider that something as simple as flowing water can create such patterns.
And that dynamic range issue?
Well, all I can say, is that more often than not my iPhone impresses me with what it can capture when I point it at something incredible.
And on to 2025…
So, bringing us more up to date – and on to my mini-exploration of last month:
You know the drill – but here came my echo, and this time it sent a true shiver down my spine.
We’d parked up in almost the exact spot that some of those pictures above had been taken, only 1 year before.
Only this time, far from being buried under towers of glacial blue ice, we were stood in an Icelandic version of a gravel parking lot.
That place, that cave, being “inside the glacier”, existed no more.
Sure, there was a new ice cave to explore – and yes, they change naturally every year – by my word we’re really not helping things.
And it was at this very point, that I had to, and continue to, reflect.
I’d arrived here by plane – as had almost every other visitor to Iceland; millions of us, each and every year.
Sure, airlines are improving with initiatives such as SAF, and we can of course “offset” our impact (we already do quite a bit of that) but the reality is our own actions, as visitors to these incredible glaciers and caves, are causing their very destruction.
Every visitor (including me) drives to the parking lot, where we each decant into a monster-truck to drive further to the glacier itself. More destruction and deviation of nature as makeshift roads are built to accommodate carbon-producing vehicles that travel to the glacier’s moving doorstep.
And even our own actions, back home, thousands of miles from Iceland are having an impact here.
Of course, Glacial calving is a natural part of the process – and glaciers shrink and grow with different levels of winter season over periods of hundreds and thousands of years.
But we’re making it worse, accelerating that impact, and even when we’re stood with it before our own eyes – most of us still don’t seem to notice the urgency in arresting that change.
Due to this season’s activity (it had felt like summer in 15ºC only two days prior), our cave of choice today would be a much “dirtier”, as I called it, option than those before.
In reality, it just sat beneath more rockfall-covered ice than those that are situated more centrally on the glacier tongue, out here on the side of an expired volcanic formation.
But then, as always, the mood changes the second you make your way inside.
…even with an iPhone:
Going deeper into this relatively small cave, the tones and hues changed as light faded and the ice formations started to show off.
It was time to set up a tripod.
This would be one of the darkest glacier caves I’d explored (not helped by us being there in the afternoon with building cloud above) – but give a camera enough time to expose and you can still see the magic within the ice.
A “fun” little feature had opened up – rocks from above had managed to bash their way through a thinner part of the roof, forming a hole that now channelled a little waterfall into the ice cave below. (Don’t forget those helmets!)
When the cave is so dark, like this, even with an HDR bracket it can be a challenge to capture all the detail you want to show the viewer – but for me, this time, I was here for the abstract over the view.
And with bubbling, swirling, textured shapes in every direction, that crack of light was actually helping to bounce illumination around the chamber, delivering new frames I’d not seen before.
Even a crop or two from the wider shots gave me unique flows and lines which formed compositions that leapt off the screen at me when I loaded in each image into Capture One.
Of course, the “how” each of these unique shapes are formed is a topic that still intrigues me with every conversation I have with a guide – but photographically, every shot is a unique capture of something that simply won’t exist in a few months, weeks, or maybe even days at this point.
And for those techies looking for a gauge of just how tough that dynamic range is in there (and how dark it really was) – this is a 3-shot, 6-stop range, blend of the old exit (before it failed to rockfall) with the guys walking down outside in an overcast day…
It’s never going to be quite enough!
So – thoughts…
Ice caves – cool!
Literally and subjectively. These natural formations are always on the move, and are incredible to explore and experience for yourself.
Glacier recession – not cool!
Literally and objectively. Our planet is heating up – forget the fact you’ll have to hunt further for a photo, be more concerned that our climate is changing, sea levels are rising, and it’s acutely visible (and depressing) when you see it for yourself over time here in Iceland.
Echos of the past – I love them.
They allow the nerd in me to compare, to reflect, to contrast every previous stage of my life to what I do now.
But sometimes, just sometimes, those echos are not the bringer of good news.
I’m not sure what it’s going to take for all of us to focus on this, but given the sheer numbers of people who come for the “snaps” without any of the understanding, I fear we’re still quite some way off arresting the issue, let alone attempting to reverse it.
But let’s not finish on a sad note, eh? So, of course, one final piece of (culinary) inspiration.
Mmmmm. Glacial water – pure, blue, clean, natural.
No.
Icicles in glacial ice caves need filtering before eating or drinking. Turns out there’s been quite a bit of “other stuff” buried within that ice over a few hundred years.
Not tasty.