Sunlight scattered on the surrounding snow as we hiked single file, crampons strapped to our boots, up Sólheimajökull, Iceland’s southernmost glacier—a 650-foot-thick tongue of solid ice spanning 17 square miles. Black peaks jutted out like dorsal fins from the jagged, white-capped hills around us—forged by eruptions of the volcano Katla, which churned far below ground near the frozen behemoth on which we stood.
A 90-minute trek brought us to our destination point, an ice ridge twice our height, where we sipped a whiskey toast, gazing briefly at the cloudless azure sky before beginning our descent.
