Dear readers,
After having started our operations slowly but surely during the Winter of 2007 - 2008, we decided to offer a challenging Winter tour in 2009; an adventure tour which would be the crown jewel of all our tours. Since the term "Camel Trophy" had been connected for a long period of time to the name of Land Rover (casting a bright light of adventure on this type of vehicles until there was too much Camel smoke around it), we decided to call this new flagship tour The Iceland Trophy. This would be a tour just like those that native Icelanders do during Winter on their Super 4x4s, normally close to the start of March, when the days are getting longer, but there is still a lot of snow in the highlands. Since then the Iceland Trophy has been run every year but the only smoking has been the one in Smoke gets in your eyes on the radio, and the one of the exhaust pipes under load, of course.
In fact, we envisioned the possibility of running this type of Adventure tour both in Winter and Summer: the Winter Trophy would have the snow, the unpredictable weather and driving on the glaciers as a challenge, while in the Summer Trophy the rugged roads and all the rivers to the north of the Icelandic glaciers would be the main challenge. And of course, we hand out a certificate for "having made it", at the end of each Iceland Trophy. So far, none of these have been handed over posthumously
In this first Iceland Trophy in 2009, we crossed the glacier Langjökull on the second day, which is the second biggest in Iceland about 900 square km. It is about 60 km (40 miles) long, hence the name. We probably did 40 km along the glacier, and got highest up to about 1.250 meters. For this part of the 5 day tour, the German TV station NDR (Nord Deutscher Rundfunk) joined us, and they are still showing this story in the programme "Ostsee Report" at their TV program!
Some of the days we got on this first Iceland Trophy (Winter), were among the most beautiful you can get in the winter, in the vast open highlands of Iceland, offering the feeling of being alone in the world Well, alone with your Land Rover Defender, that is.
Below are a few more pictures that describe the tour. It was made by 7 vehicles, including the leading vehicle. Enjoy!
To be continued...
By Jón Baldur Þorbjörnsson
Jón Baldur is the founder and director at Isak in Iceland. Isak is a unique 4x4 rental which rents out Land Rover Defenders 110 fully equipped for the Icelandic highlands.
