Langjokull Location And How To Get There

Langjökull lies across the western highlands. The practical question is not where it is but which side you approach from. The two approaches are two different days, on two different roads, with two different seasons. A Langjokull glacier tour from Reykjavik handles both; a hire car handles neither past a certain point.

Where Langjokull sits on the map

The ice cap runs roughly north to south across the interior, west of the Kjölur route and east of Borgarfjörður. Reykjavik is about 100 kilometres south-west of its nearest edge. Nothing about it is remote in the way the eastern highlands are. Both approach roads leave the ring road within two hours of the capital, and both end at a staffed base rather than in the middle of nowhere.

The west approach — Borgarfjordur and Husafell

The shorter and simpler of the two. Route 1 north out of the capital, then west into Borgarfjörður and up the valley to Húsafell. It is a settlement with a hotel, a bistro, a petrol station and geothermal baths. The drive takes about an hour and forty minutes, and every metre of it is paved.

This is the side the ice tunnel is on, and it is the side to take if the tunnel is what you came for. From Húsafell the last leg to the Klaki base camp is either the mountain road in summer or the operator's shuttle at any time of year.

The south approach — the Golden Circle and Gullfoss

Route 35 through Þingvellir and Geysir to Gullfoss, about two hours from Reykjavik on tarmac the whole way. The upper car park at the waterfall is where four of these tours meet, and there is free parking and a café there.

The advantage of this side is that the drive is a day out in itself. You pass the three Golden Circle stops on the way, so a self-driver can do the route on their own timetable and buy only the glacier hour. Several tours do the same thing the other way round, putting the Golden Circle either side of the ice in one coach or jeep day.

Kaldidalur, road 550 — 4x4 only, June to mid-October

Kaldidalur, the "cold valley", is the highland track between Langjökull and the small ice cap of Ók. It is how the western base camp is reached from Húsafell. The road is rough gravel, four-wheel-drive only, and open from June to mid-October. Outside those months it closes entirely.

That closure is far less of a problem than it sounds. A shuttle runs the forty minutes from Húsafell to the Klaki base camp for ISK 2,000 return. From mid-October to May everybody uses it, which is exactly why the ice tunnel keeps running through a Reykjavik winter.

Kjolur, road F35 — opens 1 June on average

Kjölur is the old highland crossing between Langjökull and Hofsjökull, running from Gullfoss north to Hveravellir and on into the north of the country. The Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration publishes an average opening date of 1 June for the Gullfoss to Hveravellir stretch. The earliest in recent years was 30 May; the latest was 14 June.

The spread between those dates is two weeks, and the reason is snow cover rather than the calendar. If a highland crossing is part of your plan, check the road authority in the week before you travel rather than booking around an average.

What a normal hire car can and cannot do

An ordinary two-wheel-drive hire car reaches Húsafell and Gullfoss comfortably, all year, and that is genuinely useful: both are where tours start. What it cannot do is go any further.

• It cannot drive the mountain roads. Road 550 and F35 are marked for four-wheel-drive and Icelandic hire agreements exclude damage on them for anything else.
• It cannot drive onto the ice. No hire-car insurance in Iceland covers a vehicle on a glacier, and the surface hides crevasses that move from season to season.
• It does not need to. Every tour that starts at Gullfoss or Húsafell includes the vehicle for the last leg, which is the leg you were never going to drive.

The honest summary: self-driving to the base and buying the glacier leg is the cheapest way to do this. Driving yourself the whole way is not an option anybody sells, because it is not one.

Getting there without a car at all

Most of the tours here collect you in Reykjavik. Some come to your hotel door. One picks up from any of eleven numbered bus stops across the city, which is the more flexible arrangement if you are in an apartment rather than a hotel. Days from the capital run six to eleven hours, depending on how much of the Golden Circle is attached.

Scheduled buses reach Gullfoss and Húsafell in summer, and from either of those the tour vehicle takes over. There is no public transport of any kind onto the ice cap, and there never has been.