Sigrún on forty winters in Skaftafell

Sigrún Halldórsdóttir has guided in Skaftafell since 1986. She has watched the tongue of the glacier retreat past three of her own marker cairns, and she still walks the same approach every week in season.

We sat with her at the hut in August and asked what had changed.

On the ice

“The ice moves back and the moraine gets bigger. That is the short answer. The long answer is that the walk-in is forty minutes longer than it was, and the rock we cross is looser every year because it has only just stopped being under ice.”

She is less interested in the photographs of retreat than in what it does to route planning. Ground that was stable for a decade is now re-sorting itself, and a line that worked last October may not work this one.

On groups

“Eight is right. Twelve is a school trip. With eight you can stop when one person needs to stop and nobody resents it.”

She has turned groups around four times in forty winters and remembers each one. Three were weather. One was a pair who had lied on the fitness form, which she describes as the only kind of client she cannot work with.

On what has not changed

“People come here to be somewhere quiet and they are surprised when it is also cold. That has never changed. Not once.”