Laugavegur Trail | Thórsmörk Trail Volunteers

Oct 25

Wild. Man. volunteers in 2014

We are delighted to announce that our wilderness management programme has received a green light for 2014!

Following the team’s successes last summer, plans are now well underway for two projects that will run next season. The work of our wilderness management teams focuses on trail construction and maintenance as well as erosion control projects. In addition volunteers are involved in GPS data collection throughout the area as part of our ongoing Pathfinder mapping project. On the fourth week of the placements, participants have the opportunity to hike the famous Laugurvegur trail from Landmannalaugar to Thórsmörk.

Placements on the wilderness management team are for 6 weeks although shorter placements will once again be available for returning volunteers. The programme is supported by Iceland’s Forest Service (Skógrækt ríkisins) and our partners and there is no participation fee.

The projects will start on June 2^nd and July 21^st. The first week is used for training and induction and this takes place at our base camp in Langidalur. After completing that, participants are divided into small teams who then work on a series of different projects throughout the area swapping between locations. Teams will spend time on projects organized from our base camp as well as the new wilderness camps that we are establishing to enable us to work on more remote trails.

Full programme details and an online application form will be posted here shortly, and we will begin our search for volunteers in November.

Oct 9

Takk fyrir sumarið! – Thank you for the summer!

Finally we have hung up the orange waterproofs and packed away the rock bars as the end of our project season has arrived. The volunteer camp has closed and the first snow has arrived in Langidalur. It has been a great season for our new programme and we would like to thank everyone who has helped to make it such a success. Together our teams completed over 200 weeks of practical work throughout the area, which greatly exceeded our targets despite the challenging weather conditions.

Our main work included returning to projects that were began last season including sites on Valahnúkur, the Langidalur/Húsadalur valley trail and the Básar Circle but our additional teams also allowed us to take on new tasks further afield including work on the Tindfjall Circle as well as a flight of timber framed steps and a large area of erosion control work(drainage and reseeding) on the Fimmvörðuháls trail. Our actual work area was then enlarged beyond Thórsmörk and Goðaland with our first volunteer project at Emstrur in August.

We would like to thank everyone who joined us for our first season; our very own Wilderness Management teams, groups from WorkingAbroad, our friends from the Icelandic volunteer group Sjá (Sjálfboðaliðasamtök um náttúruvernd) and summer staff from the Forest Service (Skógrækt ríkisins). We very much enjoyed working with you and the results from all the great work that you all did speaks for themselves.

We would especially like to thank our “operations team” (the group leaders, project organisers, returning volunteers and friends) who brought the programme to life and kept things moving so well all summer despite all the challenges – we could not have done it without you!

We hope you all enjoyed your time with us in Thórsmörk and look forward to working with you again. After a short break, we now begin preparations for next season… there are lots of new projects and opportunities planned and full details of placements for 2014 will be published here soon.

Aug 31

The last group leaves Langidalur…

The departure of seven of our wilderness management volunteers yesterday marks the end of our group work this summer. Additional last minute difficulties caused by the Krossá and Hvanná rivers meant that departure was brought forward by one day to make sure that nobody would miss their flight home.

We would like to thank the team for all their hard work over the last six weeks and hope that everyone left with some good memories of their time with us and our adventures together in Thórsmörk, Goðaland and Emstrur.

We look forward to working with you again next summer!

Aug 24

Autumn arrives…

As the first signs of Autumn appear around us in Thórsmörk our programme is coming to an end. The last group of volunteers have one more week before they head home leaving a small team to pack down the Langidalur camp in September.

Our team is now working on finishing the last major projects of the summer which include a flight of timber framed steps on the Fimmvörðuháls trail and sections of stone retainment wall, gravel drains and new timber steps on the main trail to Húsadalur. Both projects are progressing very well and if the weather is kind to us, all the work will be completed this season.

Our last big project of the season will be a trip together with all our remaining volunteers for a long-range project planned at Emstrur with Ferðafélag Íslands… it is very exciting as it our first task on the Laugavegur trail outside Thórsmörk.

Aug 11

July in Thórsmörk

Summer in Thórsmörk is passing by very quickly and today our second Wilderness Management team has set of on its hiking week. The group will arrive in Landmannalaugar today and will then be hiking back to Thórsmörk during the next week. This gives us plenty of time to organise all the exciting work projects we want to do with them in the second half of August.

The weather during the last month has been much kinder to us than earlier in the summer and we have been uploading pictures from our July adventures…

There are now 2 sets of photos of our teams on Flickr…
Our volunteers (2013)
Wilderness management Team A (2013) (pictures taken by John McIntire)