August 2026
There are certain subjects you become knowledgeable about because you studied them. And then there are subjects you become knowledgeable about because they broke your leg in ten places. Glacial floods fall into the second category for me.
I’ve been watching the recent news about glacial flooding in Asia, and whenever I see the words glacial flood in a headline, I pay attention. I may not have a degree in geology, volcanology or glaciology, but I do have some rather impressive field experience.
Mine begins in Iceland. In 1996, a volcano called Gjálp erupted underneath Vatnajökull, Europe’s largest ice cap. The eruption melted an enormous amount of ice, eventually releasing a catastrophic glacial flood called a jökulhlaup, which is an Icelandic word that roughly translates, at least in my personal dictionary, to: “Water is about to rearrange absolutely everything in its path.”
The flood tore across the Skeiðarársandur outwash plain, carrying enormous chunks of ice and sediment with it. It destroyed sections of Iceland’s Ring Road, power lines and bridges, including the Skeiðará Bridge. Fortunately, no one was injured during the actual flood.
Thirteen years after that catastrophic event, on August 17, 2009, I arrived on the scene. By then, the flood itself was history. The evidence of what it had done was most definitely not. While exploring the area, I managed to slide down the remnants of the Skeiðará Bridge, one of the bridges destroyed by the 1996 flood. And man, was I having fun. Until I wasn’t.
I broke my leg in ten places. Not one. Not two. Ten. When the doctor told me it would take somewhere between 18 and 24 months to heal, I genuinely thought he was joking. He was not. It was 22 months before I could put any weight at all on that leg. Apparently, when a doctor looks at an X-ray of your leg and gives you a recovery estimate approaching the length of an elephant pregnancy, he is not being dramatic.
This August 17 marked 17 years (a golden anniversary if you will) since my personal introduction to the destructive capabilities of a glacial flood, although technically the glacier had done its damage 13 years before I arrived. I simply found a creative way to become part of its history. And ever since, stories about glaciers, volcanic eruptions, glacial floods and slides hit a little differently.
We tend to think of landscapes as permanent. Mountains stay where mountains are. Rivers stay where rivers are. Bridges stay attached to roads. Until they don’t. A glacier can hold back an unimaginable amount of water. A volcano can erupt underneath miles of ice. A lake can form where there wasn’t one before. And suddenly a landscape that has existed for generations can be rewritten in minutes. Iceland taught me that lesson rather forcefully.
But I can’t tell this story without talking about the people who were there with me that day, because the outcome could have been very different without them. Finn and Hauker had specialized field rescue training and, just as importantly, the equipment needed to call for help from the middle of nowhere. Gudney was a nurse and somehow managed the rather important job of administering morphine every 15 minutes during the 300 km drive back to Reykjavik. Harry, Debbie and Helga kept me warm as I was going into shock, supplied the moral support and, somehow, kept things upbeat in circumstances that weren’t particularly upbeat. And then there was the absolute best travel buddy in the world, Dan Leffel, who was beside me through all of it.
They were no longer just people on the tour with me when I had a spectacularly bad encounter with a bridge. They became lifelong friends.
At the time, loss of the leg was not “off the table.” That’s a phrase that tends to stick with you. So while I can joke now about sliding down the remains of a bridge destroyed by a glacial flood, I also know how incredibly fortunate I was to be surrounded by exactly the people I needed when things went very, very wrong.
And those people apparently knew exactly what kind of medicine I needed after I got out of the hospital, too. When Finn and Gudney picked me up, they had gotten a wheelchair for me, and rather than simply taking the injured American wherever she was supposed to go next, they took me to the thing that has always made me happiest: HORSES! A friend of theirs owned an Icelandic horse breeding farm, so we stopped for a visit. There I was, fresh out of an Icelandic hospital, leg held together by considerably more hardware than it had arrived with, sitting in a wheelchair surrounded by Icelandic horses while holding a kitten. Seriously, there is nothing better for the soul than horses and a kitten.
The following year, most of the group got together again for another trip around Iceland. I was still very much recovering and couldn’t make the trip, but they went back to the bridge and stopped for one more photo. I wasn’t there physically, but I was there in their hearts. Seventeen years later, I realize that’s even better.
Glacial floods, volcanoes, broken bridges, ten fractures, 22 months before I could put weight on my leg, horses and even a kitten make for a pretty incredible story. But the people who were there when I needed them most are the part worth remembering.
