Svartifoss in Skaftafell National Park

After our wonderful two hour glacier walk, we planned on hiking to Svartifoss. Little did I know, it was a four mile round trip. Once our hike was over on the glacier and we sat down to eat, I knew there was no way we could do that. So we planned to return in the morning before our Jokusarlon boat tour.

When we returned in the morning, I double checked our maps and the description of the hike. It said the hike should take us about two to two and a half hours and be about 7 km round trip. That's what were planning on. What we didn't plan on was our GPS taking us on a secret route that would cut our time in half.



There's this road a little bit further up and a parking area down at the bottom of the hill but our GPS man told us to keep going up and the warning sign said the road was only monitored June 1 through September 1. So we kept going. We didn't see anyone and no one tried to stop us.



After an extremely steep drive up and making it to the top, we kind of looked around trying to find out where we were. There were these cute little houses built into the mountain on one side and cliffs with stretches of land on the otherside. There was a spot big enough to park two cars, so we parked ours and got out to look around. We found a hiking trail that said Svartifoss and we began our two and a half hour trek up.



Five minutes after hiking straight up a mountain, we saw a sign that said Svartifoss was only .5 km away from where we were. Uhh... What?!? The hiking guide and all other signs said it would be a 3.5 km hike!! Some how, we had significantly decreased our walking time and mileage by taking that turn at the other parking lot. I'm still not even sure if we were allowed up there but we hastened our pace after that sign. The clouds were not looking promising. The last part of the hike was down hill and made it easy but it is some what difficult if you have knee problems.



Svartifoss is not as big as the pictures make it look but worth a visit. If you take the hike you're supposed to take, you get views of one of the glacier tongues near by along with another waterfall and nature life.