{"id":84172,"date":"2023-12-03T22:27:03","date_gmt":"2023-12-03T22:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/?p=84172"},"modified":"2025-11-07T19:36:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T19:36:19","slug":"gin-glyms-wi5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/problem\/gin-glyms-wi5","title":{"rendered":"Jaws of Glymur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winter 2023 was unusually cold; it was the coldest winter in southwest Iceland for a hundred years. This created unique conditions in the canyon below Glymur and for the waterfall itself. On January 17th that year, an Icelander living in Italy and an Italian living in Iceland ventured into the canyon with a mission to climb any of the established sought-after routes in this magnificent setting. However, due to the unique conditions and the <\/span>old pencil-drawn topos<\/span><\/a> on isalp.is being extremely confusing, they ended up climbing a new route. During the climb they thought they might be on Sacrifice (WI5+)<\/a> or a variation of Draumalei\u00f0in (WI5+)<\/a> but it turned out to be neither.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It became apparent that this section of Glymur hadn\u2019t been climbed before. Watching\u00a0 old videos and pictures the reason was also apparent – that section was never frozen. Instead, it was a booming waterfall with ice on both sides. Sacrifice is to the left of this flow while Draumalei\u00f0in is on the right side, and even further right – since it goes up the canyon wall on the right and climbers will top out on the south side of the canyon.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the first half the new route goes up towards the jaws of Glymur – where the flow is strongest. This part contained a full pitch of overhanging cauliflower ice formations with tricky protection. It was full commitment climbing requiring ice climbing in all three dimensions. In keeping with the mouth analogy the ice formations resembled the crooked teeth of an enormous giant. For the second half the waterfall was still partially open so the route veers to the right of the main flow to avoid the spray. In Icelandic the name is \u201cGin Glyms\u201d, since gin means open mouth in Icelandic and alliteration is cherished by the natives. Gin & tonic may also have played a part in the naming.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Route description<\/h3>\n

The route is between Sacrifice and Draumalei\u00f0in. Those routes are identified as number 14.1 and 14.5 respectively on isalp.com.\u00a0 Based on that numbering scheme Gin Glyms should be around 14.2 – since it starts closer to the former than the latter. The route is long (over 200 meters) and here is an attempt at <\/span>a <\/span>video topo of the route<\/span><\/a>, but traditional text and pictures are provided below.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pitch 1 (35m WI4+): <\/strong>The first pitch goes mostly straight up – on near vertical ice lacking features. The ice was tough and the anchor was chosen at the first possible rest, right before the cauliflower ice formations became prevalent. In the beginning of the pitch a large bergschrund had to be crossed<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00cd\"\"<\/p>\n

Matteo builds an anchor after the first pitch. The bergschrund-like crevasse can be seen at the bottom of the picture.Pitch 2 (55m WI5): Start by traversing right from the anchor by about 5 meters. This puts your belayer out of the fall line and puts the climber directly on the cauliflower adventure path. This section was tricky because the consistency of the ice varied. The roofs and icicles required delicate technique that was closer to bouldering than the regular steep ice routine. Navigation was also a challenge; it was sometimes impossible to see what lay ahead while hanging under a roof. Fortunately, communication with the belayer was possible and could be counted on for general directions. The pitch ends by a large ice wall, at the bottom of the open waterfall, where it provides shelter for spray and falling ice.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Pitches 1 and 2. Pitch 2 ends by an ice wall that provides shelter from the open waterfall above.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pitch 3 (75m WI4+): <\/strong>This pitch starts as a low-angle ice walk across a channel that takes you to the right of the open waterfall. It is possible to protect on the right side and we placed one screw there, about mid way. It was most important for the climber to get quickly across since on this section ice mist is coming down and there is no shelter from falling ice. Once on the \u201cother side\u201d there is plenty of ice for screws. We estimate that the \u201cice walk\u201d is about 15-20 meters long, the rest was regular steep waterfall ice climbing. We extended our 60 meter rope to cover the 75 meters by using a running belay at the end.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Pitch 3. The camera is tilted downwards and the waterfall can be seen to the left of the route. The route was climbed a few days earlier and had a bit more ice and less snow than this picture shows.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pitch 4 (60m WI4+): <\/strong>Starts with a steep but short ice section. It then turns into very delicate climbing, due to the snow covering the ice. The angle isn\u2019t vertical so it\u2019s possible to lean into the snow but careful movement is required in order to not start sliding and finding placements requires searching, sometimes on rather long runouts. In hindsight, better ice could have been had by traversing left but this would also put climbers closer to the booming waterfall which comes with another set of risks.\u00a0 We ran the rope out on this one and found a good spot for belay.\u00a0 This however forced us to climb a short extra pitch to top out on Botns\u00e1.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pitch 4.1 (10m WI3): <\/strong>This pitch felt very easy after everything else we had done, also very short. Not much to say about it. Going into it, we didn\u2019t know how much we had left, because we couldn\u2019t see the top from our anchor at the end of Pitch 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Pitches 4 og 4.1. The final pitches on the route.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

FA Halld\u00f3r Fannar and Matteo Meucci, January 17th, 2023<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry, this entry is only available in Icelandic. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.Veturinn 2023 var \u00f3venju kaldur;\u00a0 \u00e1 su\u00f0vesturhorninu var tala\u00f0 um kaldasta veturinn \u00ed hundra\u00f0 \u00e1r. \u00deetta skapa\u00f0i einstakar a\u00f0st\u00e6\u00f0ur \u00ed Glymsgili og \u00fe\u00e1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22481,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22481"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84172"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95080,"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84172\/revisions\/95080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isalp.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}