Básar | Thórsmörk Trail Volunteers

May 29

Training volunteer leaders in Thórsmörk

This week we have been training our volunteer team leaders and preparing them for the season ahead.

Five leaders from our operations team joined us for a week of induction and training which included helping to set up the Langidalur base camp and organise food and equipment for the teams arriving in June. The group tent is now up, the hut is ready and the new drying room is nearing completion. The Langidalur base camp is now ready for business!

The leaders course was organised and presented by Tony Newby and hosted by Ferðafélag Íslands at Langidalur. Tony helped to establish our training programme last season and has a long history of training volunteer team leaders in both the UK and Iceland. The course has been developed specifically for our programme and it addresses the challenges faced by our team leaders and volunteers, living, working and hiking in the area through the summer months.

Now we are ready…

May 21

The first volunteers of 2014…

Our first volunteers arrived in Thórsmörk last week to help with preparations at the Langidalur base camp. The team included EVS (European Voluntary Service) volunteers from the Hafnafjöður Scouts who joined for the first time this season. As well as general repairs at the camp, work included setting up a new composting system, planting a few birch trees and painting our hut – inside and out (they were also very good at lighting the campfire!).

The team had a chance to explore the area and help begin this season’s GIS data collection as we continue our work extending the pathfinder mapping project throughout the area. After ten days alone at the Langidalur camp it was good to have some company – Thank you to everyone who came to help!

Now we can start the summer…

Mar 8

Summer dreaming…

So we have now allocated almost all of our volunteer places and summer preparations are well underway. After all the planning and interviews this winter, it is quite hard to believe that we will be back in Langidalur and setting up camp in about eight weeks time!

As well as recruiting the team this winter, we have been busy working on a few changes to the programme for next season. One of the most important new developments is the establishment of our new “short-term placements” so that volunteers can join the teams for 2 weeks and take part in the ongoing projects. This season, for the first time, we are recruiting all of our volunteers ourselves.

Another new development that we are very excited about, is the establishment of our new “long-range trail team” that will work on remote sites in Thórsmörk and along the Laugavegur Trail. The use of wilderness camps will allow our teams to access several new worksites on sections of the trails that have seen little repair work in the past. To reduce travel time, our teams will stay for up to three nights at wilderness camps before returning to the relative comfort of the Langidalur base camp. Long-range places will be offered to the team as projects are planned, they will be optional and will of course depend on suitable weather conditions.

The Langidalur base camp will open again in May. We will have a couple of weeks to get everything ready and several improvements are planned. The most significant of these is setting up drying facilities for our clothing and equipment. This was a huge challenge for everyone last season (especially in June) and every effort is being made to find a good solution for this summer. Ummm… dry boots!

Our challenge is to have everything ready for June 1st and we are very much looking forward to getting started.

Still waiting for a place…
We will be reviewing our team allocations on March 15^th to find out how many last minute places are available. We will then contact everyone on the waiting list to let them know about possible places. We would like to complete the groups and finalise the team by April 1^st. Thanks for your patience.

Mar 6

Þórsmörk Team News on Facebook

We would like to invite our new volunteers, and everyone who has worked with us in Thórsmörk and Goðaland, to join our Þórsmörk Team News group on Facebook.

Feb 21

Our 2013 photo gallery

This brings back some good memories of last summer…

We have published several albums of photos taken by our volunteers last season and they can be found on our Flickr page. The new albums include pictures of our teams and their work as well as photos from their adventures on the Laugavegur hike.

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the albums and if any of our volunteers would like to add their pictures, please get in touch.