The Frozen Flame
-January 10, 2019- Transcript written after the storm-
All was pitch black and silent as I hiked out in the frigid, yet still, winter morning towards the glacier. With just a headlamp to light my way, I walked along the path alone. My mission was to chop steps into the ice, making it safer for the morning ice cave tours ahead. As I walked, my thoughts lingered on the previous night: how this calmness compared to the chaos of just hours before.
I reached the glacier's edge, put my crampons on, and hiked up the ruined path that we used previously to scale the ice. After the winds of the night’s storm, there wasn't much left of our path on the fragile trail. The moraine would have to be raked into a walkable path once again.
As I swung the massive ax over my shoulder—striking it through the ice—a loud thud and crack could be heard with every swing. Winter glacial ice feels like 50-meter-thick glass and cannot be broken easily. Still, relentless swinging eventually molded a walkable step. One step down, three more to go.
As I continued chopping and the minutes rolled into an hour, the pitch black slowly faded with the coming dawn. The rolling glacial hills that met the edge of the lagoon came into view; there was a subtle, pink glow to the water as my eyes slowly adjusted away from the darkness. I then looked up over the volcano, Öræfajökull, that this glacier rested under. To my surprise, a sprinkled glow began to appear.
A colossal, lenticular cloud gradually came into view as the morning light poured over the horizon. Its slight pink color began to saturate deeper with every passing minute. For a few moments, I couldn’t process what I was seeing. The sheer scale of this cloud made everything else seem minuscule. Simply put, I had never seen anything like it. This existed only because of the violent wind battle from the night before.
More minutes passed and I gave up on chopping my ice steps. The sheer mesmerization of the cloud's growing luminosity held all of my attention...like a moth to a light, I was transfixed. Then in a brief moment, I broke my trance and I remembered that I had brought my camera with me. As I moved to capture the moment, I noticed that the UFO cloud was beginning to evolve once again as the sun rose higher. What I experienced next, I’ll never forget.
The lenticular cloud had transformed from a hot pink to a brilliant, fiery orange. Its vivid radiance lit the normally blue ice, into a shining orange ice that of which I had never seen before. The sun could not be seen over the horizon, and yet myself, the ice, and the lagoon were all on fire under the heavenly cloud. For those 15 minutes, I had left Earth. I was alone, in an alien world, brought upon only by chaos. Nature's unrelenting destruction had created its own perfect storm of a masterpiece—and I had it all to myself. To this day, it is still the most beautiful moment I have ever experienced...and it had all come to pass after the most perilous night of my life just 10 hours before...
-January 09, 2019 (The Night Before)- Transcript written on the night of the storm and rescue operation-
The hurricane winds picked up tremendously since we had finished our tours for the day. I could hear large gusts hitting our base camp, shaking the metal window shutters as I edited a photo from my past Greenland expedition. Around 9:00 pm, I heard helicopter blades swishing from above. One of my friends who worked at the national park knocked on our door and entered our container. He informed us that a Japanese woman went missing from one of the trails around a famous waterfall in the cliffs above the glacier. The Icelandic Search and Rescue (SAR) team had been deployed around the national park to find her.
The woman had been missing since she, along with her husband and child, hiked to the waterfall. Her husband wanted to retreat due to the dangerous weather conditions, but she resisted and traveled further. After she did not return from the afternoon hike, the park rangers summoned the search party. Apparently, she continued up the trail with a dead phone and micro spike crampons for just one foot. Day turned into evening and the search had grown from a handful of people to three hundred SARs dispatched from all around Iceland with a helicopter scouring the area with thermal detection. There was still no sign of her.
As we found out, our lead guide entered the container and implored us to join in the search. We quickly geared up. As we drove to the SAR Headquarters, the dark night sky lit up. The northern lights burned across the entire sky. We arrived to find that every single company on site gathered its gear for this one common cause. I never felt more pride than in that moment for the Skaftafell community.
After a quick briefing, our team of four guides embarked on our mission. We accompanied two SAR members into the canyon, leading up to a massive waterfall; unfortunately, there was a possibility that she could have fallen down the rocks or into the river. As we hiked towards the canyon over the hill—in pure darkness—bright, green light radiated above us. The atmosphere of the wild aurora was beautiful, tense, and hopeless. She had been lost for more than six hours and the helicopter’s thermal cameras were unable to detect anything. We reached the point where we would have to scale the river, venturing off of the trail.
There was no path for us to walk on as we attempted to navigate the canyon—only over the ice of the half-frozen river. We could hear the unfrozen river surging below us as we stepped across the uncertain ice. Every few steps, the ice would break below me and my leg would plunge into the waters. Still, we continued on.
Halfway up the canyon we reached a wall. Our lead guide and the other SAR member climbed up and called for the two of us to remain at the base of the wall. They continued on while we helplessly waited. Eventually, we were told to cease the search that night, while the lead guide continued to navigate the canyon up above. Unfortunately for us, there was nothing more we could do. Yet, despite the orders, we were not ready to give in just yet.
Instead of calling it in for the night, we returned to brief the SAR command and inquired into further missions or ways to help. There were still many areas of the landscape where she could have fallen, but we had not yet covered, including the ice on the glacier under the top of those cliffs. It turned out that this was exactly what they were planning to do next and asked how many times we had been onto Skaftafellsjokull Glacier. "Twice a day, everyday for months," I replied. The two of us being guides knew that glacier inside and out. We decided that we would lead a team of 5 SAR members up to the ice and show them our carved path near the cliffs. Providing them with pairs of our glacial crampons and harnesses, for the first time that night, I felt like I was contributing.
We drove the SAR team’s Super Jeep across the walking pathway to the glacier. The 5 SAR members appeared to me like an action team out of a movie. These guys who had trained and had performed missions together as brothers, began giving each other shit—attempting to lighten the solemn and terrifying mood. As we drove into the dark abyss, the glacier roared at us. At this point in the night, 100mph winds were pushing against our vehicle, attempting to halt our progress. To add to the chaos, a dust storm enveloped the vehicle as we approached the glacier. After 20 minutes of driving against the hurricane force winds, we came to a stop. From here we would walk to the access point, about half a kilometer away. We began to gear up within the shelter of the vehicle, preparing for the ensuing storm ahead of us.
The two of us—as the Skaftafellsjokull Glacier guides—instructed the team how to strap their glacial crampons on and traverse the ice. It was our job to lead them to the only access point. Layered up, line equipment ready, and crampons on, we opened the door and just as fast, the piercing wind almost blew it off.
We could barely stand as rock and dust shot at us like bullets and obscured any visibility. There was then a moment in my life that I will never forget. Roped up to each other, the search and rescue leader approached me, shining our brightest light, handing it to me and yelling, "LEAD THE WAY." My heart raced as I took my first steps into the jowls of a roaring monster.
And right as I took those first steps...as if predestined, a call suddenly came in. They had found her. She was alive.
What felt like a death march just moments before instantly shifted into an explosive celebration. You could see the joy and relief on each of our team's faces as we realized she was alive and stable. We screamed, danced, and embraced in the wind for a brief moment knowing that the day was won. The effort of everyone that night had not been in vain. An entire community of volunteers and the effort of a country's bravest SARs had come together in a time of emergency to help just one individual in need. We survived the storm.
My night that had started just as any other—editing photos—ended with meaning greater than any picture could ever embellish. And so I typed this as it is fresh in my mind on this very same night, so I can always look back upon it as the moment in my life where I felt most alive, and yet closest to death. Goodnight.
<Final Words>And with that storm's passing, this picture is the only proof of that night's endeavor. For but the memory of its howling winds along with this recounting tale of it will ever exist.
A Flame forever Frozen in my soul.
