Skógrækt ríkisins | 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 21

Our base camp at Langidalur

We have added a new album to our Flickr page with pictures of the Langidalar Base Camp. They capture the development of the camp this summer and the establishment of our volunteer hut there. Work began at the camp on May 13th and was ongoing throughout much of the summer. The Langidalur base camp will remain at the centre of our programme in 2014.

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.

Oct 1

Iceland Weekly Report – Weeks 4, 5 and 6

Cutting forest materials for our trail repair work in August
– From a blog by one of our team.

Leaf whispers

Since the weather improved and the sun begun to shine in the beginning of week 4 of my training period, time is flying by really fast and there’s not enough time for me to write about events as they happen. In the past weeks I’ve been doing a lot of different things, it seems like I learn a new thing every day. Here is a short summary of my activities:

Week 4:

In the 4th week of my training period I’ve learned how to drive different tractors and make firewood with a splitting machine. I’ve begun to learn practical work with the chainsaw (from the thinning champion of Iceland!) and chainsaw maintenance. I’ve also been driving the pick-up truck a lot and did some brush cutting. On the weekend I’ve stayed in Thjorsardalur and helped with various tasks (collecting fares, maintenance etc.) on the Forest service’s campsite.

A video of…

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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!