When I stepped off the plane in Keflavik, Iceland with my bike box in tow, I was well aware I was not the first cyclist to visit the country. That honor falls to Horace Dall and his 1933 crossing of the island. What I didn’t expect was seeing a Facebook post from my near-neighbor Kurt Refsnider that he too was in Reykjavik. Then there was my friend Chris Reichel who was inbound a couple weeks later, and Brett Davis and crew who had left just a couple weeks prior. It would seem Iceland––is the place to ride.
Having spent all of July in Iceland, the bulk of that in the rugged interior atop my Salsa Bucksaw, I can understand the allure it holds for adventure cyclists. It is a magical landscape seemingly ripped from the pages of a fantasy novel. At nearly every turn I half expected Bilbo Baggins to grab me by the arm and shuttle me off to Middle Earth. There were scads of things that I had prepared myself for, but a ton more elements of bike travel in Iceland that truly caught me off guard. Below is my overview of how to plan for your own Icelandic bikepacking odyssey.
The complete story from my journey will be available in print in the 2015 Gear Guide issue of Overland Journal.
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