Vatnshellir cave is an underground lava tunnel in Snæfellsjökull National Park in West Iceland. It wasn't originally planned for us to go there but since we had some extra time we decided to do it. This lava tube is one of the oldest in Iceland, the age reaching around 8000 years old. A couple of popular caves are much newer, around 2 to 3000 years old.
You cant go there alone, you will need to take a tour to get access. You would probably kill yourself if exploring it by yourself. The guide explained really well how caves like this form and what happened in this tunnel. To put it shortly... When lava started to cool down from the outside, the inside was still a flowing lava river. Basically, the cave drained itself, the lava had a way out but no new lava was coming in, leaving behind this huge cave.
The cave is fully dark and the guide provided us with a flashlight to see around us and where we step. There are several layers of how deep the cave goes. Imagine going there alone, your flashlight dies and you have no idea where to go. Moreover, you can fall into another deep crevasse so it's pretty much a certain death if you don't have a flashlight. Fortunately, we had many of these.
These rocks are like a time capsule of the time, when the lava solidified. You can still see how it dripped down until it was cool enough that it didn't anymore.
This is an arctic fox that sometime in the past probably fell into the cave somehow but found no way out of this maze, animals also cant see anything in total darkness plus arctic foxes cant climb walls. Unfortunately, this is where it found its end.
If you look closely, you can see that when the majority of the cave was empty already, at the bottom of the cave lava was still flowing. Flow marks are still embedded in the lower wall.
Finally, we went to the deepest section of the cave. They had built the stairs there to get down there.
That hall was huge, really strange feeling to be there.
View to the end of the cave. The tour guide also told us that there is also a huge cave right beneath our feet but there is no access point into it, pretty scary. Fortunately, the floor is thick enough for it to not collapse, and the lava stone is also very sturdy.
We all decided to switch our flashlights off for a moment. You cant see nor hear absolutely anything, you just know that you are in a big cave, deep underground.
It was a really awesome experience and I'm glad we decided to spontaneously take this tour. The weather was bad up on the ground anyway.
I am looking forward to exploring more lava tunnels in the future too when I'm back in Iceland.
Wow, so cool... I used to (it's been more than 2 years from the last time) a Speleologist, and I loved exploring caves 😍... Thanks for sharing
Oh, that profession sounds super cool!
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