Plan a 5 days hiking trip in Hornstrandir – Iceland

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Be prepared for the worst – How to get there – Camping – When to go – Plan your stages – Equipment – Food

In this post I will give you as many tips as possible to help you plan a multi-day hiking trip to Hornstrandir Nature Reserve, one of the wildest and remote places in Iceland. This post is related to the day by day description, you can directly jump to the other post if it is what you are looking for. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

This multi-day hike in the Westfjords of Iceland was one of my dreams since I first stepped in this remote country in 2009. Hornstrandir was also the must-go #1 since the moment I started a list on my website. 9 years later in 2018 it was the right time to go back in Iceland.

If you know me, you should already know that I love Iceland. The first time I went there was 2009 when I spent 3 months volunteering to maintain the hiking trails; I went back again for a few days in 2016. You can see a selection of pictures in my Iceland gallery and a video montage at the bottom of this videos page.

In 2018 I returned to Iceland for the 3rd time to do some volunteering work for the hiking trail maintenance in Thórsmörk for 2 weeks. This trip to Iceland was the perfect opportunity to extend my stay and make my dream come true. Susanna, my partner who’s less adventurous than me, was initially hesitant to join me in such a remote place; after asking me many questions she decided to join and didn’t regret her choice to come. She traveled to Reykjavik where we met at the end of my volunteering weeks, we then started our trip to the Westfjords to begin this beautiful adventure.

After a flight to Ísafjörður and a boat trip, we started our 5 days hike from Veiðileysufjörður and finished in Látrar (Aðalvik) where we took the boat to return to Ísafjörður. You will find more details in a post below about planning and preparation .

Be prepared for the worst case scenario

Doing a hike for multiple days in such a remote environment, cannot be improvised. While being in Iceland you should expect to find any weather: you can be in the middle of a storm with almost no visibility at any time of the year. We started hiking in Hornstrandir in the last days of June. In some places in the north west of Iceland there was still snow and wet ground. I remembered that the weekend before we went, the famous Laugavegur hiking trail was closed because of a storm, that happened just a week after re-opening after winter.

Check the weather forecast before you trip on https://en.vedur.is/

Another challenge when hiking in Hornstrandir is that there are no roads or houses so you need to book in advance the boat to go there and the return from your chosen place. A part from an old lighthouse which runs now as a BnB, you won’t find any accommodation or shops, you need to carry your camping gear and food. As it is very far away from any city, you probably won’t have cellphone reception, you will however find in a few campgrounds emergency shelters with radio in it. Reaching one of those shelter might take one or two day hiking.

If you want to play it safe, you can rent emergency beacons which work with satellite. I highly recommend you to check the website safetravel.is which has a lot of safety information about Hornstrandir and where you can rent the beacons.

I am used to sleep outdoor in tent or bivouac bag, to sleep in the cold or cook a dehydrated meal. I’ve been camping for 1, 2 or more nights but always have the possibility to reach a road in a couple of hours or make a call in case something would happen. For this trip it was different, we were far from everything, and we needed to carry food for 5 days plus 1 reserve day plus a lot of layers of clothes.

How to reach Hornstrandir peninsula and start your hiking adventure

As there’s no road on Nordstrandir peninsula, you first need to reach Ísafjörður by bus or by plane and then take a boat. As we didn’t have much time, we choose the plane option.

Flight

We took a flight from Reykjavik Domestic airport to Ísafjörður using the company Air Iceland Connect. From the airport, you can reach Ísafjörður with the taxi bus and I would recommend to book it before.

Boat

We booked the boat trip with Borea Adventure. The boat company was really helpful with good communication before the booking and they let us leave a bag in their office with stuff we didn’t need for the hike. If you go hiking in Hornstrandir for a longer period, you can also arrange food delivery with them in certain places during the hike on some planned days.

The boats don’t go to each destination everyday, so good planning for which day to start and finish your hike is necessary. In some places they only go in the afternoon, which might not be convenient if you only have few days for your hiking trip. The season is also short, there are no “tourist” boats outside the summer period.

Hotel in Ísafjörður

As our plane landed late and took off early, we spent 2 nights in Mánagisting Guesthouse before and after the hike. It wasn’t a high standard guesthouse, a bit expensive but it was ok for Icelandic prices. By doing so we had time to get our bags ready before we took the boat and enjoyed a good shower after the hike, which it was really needed. It’s funny how we got used to our own smell… we realised how smelly we were once we returned near our stuff after the shower.

Restaurant in Ísafjörður

There are only few options to eat in Ísafjörður but we highly recommend Húsið, a small cosy restaurant and bar with delicious food and friendly staff. We ate there on our arrival and as we liked it we went back after the hike.

Camping

In Iceland you can only camp in designated campgrounds if you are in a national park and this is the case for Hornstrandir Nature Reserve. According to ust.is there is a total of 14 campgrounds with mostly dry latrine or water toilets for only some of them. Campgrounds are usually situated by a river where you can take fresh water that is clean enough to drink without using filters. In some of the campground you will even find a water point from a natural water spring. The boat isn’t cheap but at least camping on the peninsula is free of charge.
You will find the camping spot (and trails) on that pdf map (2019) or check ust.is if they have a most recent one.

When to go

Boats run from the end of May until the beginning of September. You may experience a lot of snow on the trails if you go in the beginning or end of that season. We went there at end of June and there was still a lot of snow.
You don’t need any permit if you go in the summer, however you need to report your trip to the Environmental Agency if you go between March 1^st and June 15^th and September 1^st and November 1^st.

Plan the hiking stages

As explained before for some of the following aspects, planning the hiking stages is essential and many elements should be taken in consideration:

• Start and finish your hike according to boat schedule
• You will carry food and many layers of clothes for many days
• The land is wet and if you don’t have waterproof socks (we didn’t), you will lose time to find the right path
• You will cross glacial rivers everyday, take off your shoes, cross, dry your feet and continue
• The trail is not always well marked and you are constantly looking for cairns or checking the GPS and the map to find your way
• You can only camp in a campground and need to plan stages accordingly
• You might be stuck in bad weather
• Because of some of those aspects your average pace will be slow

Taking all these points in consideration, we planned most of the stages around 11 and 13 km long. We used komoot and checked the maps we found online to know the location of the campgrounds (check the camping section).

We chose to start the hike from Veiðileysufjörður. The boat took us there in the morning; that was convenient as our flight arrived late in the evening the day before. We went to Hornvik on that same day.

The second day was an optional hike which we could decide not to do if we were too tired or in case of bad weather expected. That day was a longer walk (18km), a loop from Hornvik campground hiking to the northern point of Hornstrandir; we left our camping gear and other stuff at the campground.

We finished our hike in Aðalvík which had 2 boat stops, Látrar or Sæból. We chose the northern stop Látrar, taking the boat in the afternoon so that we had enough time for the last stage of our hike. By choosing that return point, we were hiking to the west of Hornstrandir (see days 3 to 5 in the day by day post) instead of returning south to Hesteyri. By choosing that less used trail, we were even more alone than usual on the trail. To imagine how alone you can feel, we met only one guy throughout the whole day and only 3-4 Brazilians at the camp.

Equipment

Compared to much shorter hikes, we needed to keep our backpack as light as possible. I read many blogs to find tips and the best one was to weight your equipment: weight every single piece you plan to take and make choices. You can spend hundred of euros (or chf or usd) to find the same gear 100gr lighter, or you can simply take another t-shirt that would be 100gr lighter without spending a single euro.

I share a list I made before the trip in the link bellow and I hope it can help you decide what to pack or what to leave at home.

Food

Because of the total weight to carry, we decided to take mostly dehydrated food, dry fruits, nuts and protein bars. To choose which dehydrated meals to buy, we checked the one with most calories as we knew we would spend a lot of energy during our hiking days.

Our daily food intake for this hike in Hornstrandir was:

• Coffee with dry milk, oatmeal with dry fruits for breakfast
• Thermos flask of tea, energy bars, dry fruits and nuts during the day
• Warm dehydrated meal in the evening as soon as we pitched the tent
• For a nice moment in the middle of that tour we had 2 wine pouches which correspond to 2 glasses
• Some chocolate was also packed to make life better
• I also recommend to take a bit of salt or spices with you as some dehydrated meals are not very tasty. We were really happy to have some with us to improve the taste.

We were hiking for 5 days but we took some extra food for a 6th day. That is highly recommended in case of a problem or a delay of the boat because of bad weather. That 6th day of food could be rationalised so that we could easily have food for 2 extra days.

For cooking we used a MSR WhisperLite Stove which required clean fuel. As we were flying to Ísafjörður we couldn’t carry the fuel from Reykjavik but we got some at Ísafjörður’s gas station in the evening (open until 11:30pm).
At the station you can also find gas tanks for most of the stoves. I recommend you to call the gas station a few days before to make sure they have what you need.

5 days hiking in Hornstrandir

Starting in the south from the fjord Veiðileysufjörður, we took north east direction to Hornvik. From there we did a loop to Hornbjarg in the north. After a second night in Hornvik Campground we hiked west of Hornstrandir passing by the lake Flötsvatn to arrive to our final point Látrar (Aðalvik).

We walked a total of 66.4 km with 2,350 m elevation. As you can see in the detailed tour description below, in most of the stages we were hiking between 11km and 13km with an elevation of 500m.