Usually it is not considered news worthy when we at Icelandic Mountain Guides take groups walking on Sólheimajökull glacier or any other glacier - We do that nearly every day of the year. But when the group only consists of blind people taking a stroll with us on the slippery blue ice - it surely gets noticed.
This was the case last Wednesday when a group of eight people from Germany, all blind, walked on Sólheimajökull glacier with assistance personnel and guides from Icelandic Mountain Guides.
It is hard for us blessed with eyesight to imagine how one can enjoy the power of Sólheimajökull Glacier and its magnificent surroundings in total darkness. Therefore it was challenging for the guides at Icelandic Mountain Guides to come up with a way to deliver the beauty with other, deeper methods than usual. Leading the tour was Leifur Örn Svavarsson accompanied by Jón Gauti Jónsson, Helga María Heiðarsdóttir and Katrín Pétursdóttir. The main goal was to focus the experience on senses other than vision. This included listening to the crakling sounds of water streams flowing down the glacier and the hums of the wind, tasting the pure, hundreds of years old ice carved out of the glacier with an ice axe and touching rocks, sand and ash finding out the diffrence between them
The group was very pleased with the tour and according to Leifur, the expirience was one of a kind for the others with full vision showing the way.
We at Icelandic Mountain Guides are always pleased when we can help others enjoy the wonders and beauty of Icelandic nature - and especially when we can help others that don't have the opportunities we take for granted.
Here is a video from the tour, shot by the photographer Ragnar Axelsson for a local news paper morgunblaðið,