Stuðlagil Canyon: the Basalt Gorge That Appeared in 2009

What you are looking at

The walls are columnar basalt: lava that cooled slowly enough to crack into columns as it contracted. The textbook version is hexagonal, and plenty of these are, but a good number have four, five or seven sides, and whole sections curve and fan rather than standing straight. The tallest walls reach around 30 m.

The river underneath is the Jökulsá á Dal, glacier-fed, and its colour comes from fine rock flour held in suspension. When the flow is low and the sediment load is light, that flour scatters light into the pale blue-green that put the place on every Iceland itinerary.

Why nobody photographed it before 2009

The Kárahnjúkar hydro scheme was completed in 2009. It dams the Jökulsá á Dal at the head of the valley to fill the Hálslón reservoir and diverts the water through tunnels to a power station that supplies an aluminium smelter at Reyðarfjörður. The effect downstream was to cut the river from roughly 205 m³/s to roughly 95 m³/s.

Between 2006 and 2009, as the level dropped by seven to eight metres, the columns came out of the water. Farmers in Jökuldalur had always known there was rock down there. What nobody had seen was the scale of it.

How it became famous

The Icelandic photographer and travel writer Einar Páll Svavarsson published the pictures that did it in 2016. Within two years the country's tourism minister was naming the canyon in speeches, and by 2019 the University of Iceland and the Icelandic Tourism Research Centre had it in a report as a genuine new destination.

That is fast, even by Iceland's standards. It also explains why the infrastructure feels improvised: the footpaths, the car parks and the staircase were all built after the crowds arrived, and a footbridge across the river has been planned since 2019 without yet being built.

The part the postcards leave out

The same project that revealed Stuðlagil drowned a large piece of highland wilderness behind the dam, including Töfrafoss, a waterfall that now sits under the Hálslón reservoir for most of the year. Kárahnjúkar was the most contested construction project in modern Icelandic history and the arguments about it have not gone quiet.

Call Stuðlagil an accident of conservation and you have it about right: a landscape that exists as a sight because another one was flooded. Guides on the drive up tend to tell you this. It is worth hearing before you decide the turquoise water is natural, because the shade you are photographing is a by-product of a power station.

How you say it

Stuðlagil breaks into stuðla, meaning columns, and gil, meaning gorge. Roughly: STUTH-la-gil, with the ð sounded like the th in that rather than a hard d, and the g soft. Nobody local will mind if you miss it.

The farms in the valley have been listening to visitors try for a decade.

The drive

Stuðlagil sits off road 923, which leaves the Ring Road in the Jökuldalur valley. From Egilsstaðir it is about an hour. From the Seyðisfjörður pier it is 98.8 km and around 90 minutes each way, which is the single fact that shapes every guided trip out of the fjord: 5 to 7 hours door to door, whatever the operator promises.

From Reykjavík it is a full day and then some, around 600 km by the south coast. Nobody sensible does it as a day trip; people either stay in Egilsstaðir or take it as part of a Ring Road run.

Road 923 itself is gravel in stretches but graded, and the two sides are seven minutes apart by car despite facing each other across the water. There is no bridge.

West side: the staircase at Grund

The farm Grund on Jökuldalsvegur has the developed car park: room for coaches, covered seating, water, and toilets that charge. From there the walk is about 0.6 km with 50 m of descent, and the descent is a metal staircase of 245 steps down to a viewing platform above the gorge.

What you get is a view down onto the columns and the river from above, taken in fifteen minutes. What you do not get is the whole canyon: the main section curves away behind the bend and stays out of sight. New platforms and stairs went in for the 2025 season, so the west side is better than the older guidebooks describe, but it remains a look rather than an immersion.

Every coach trip from the cruise pier stops here. On a wet day, with a mixed-ability group or an hour to spare, it is the right choice.

East side: the walk in from Klaustursel

Cross to the far bank and the visit changes character. The track starts near the farm Klaustursel and runs along the river to the gorge: about 5.7 km round trip, 130 m of climbing spread over two gentle rises, an hour of walking at a normal pace, on a gravel road wide enough for a vehicle.

There are two car parks. The first is at the start of the rough section; the second sits about ten minutes further along a bumpy, potholed track that most 2WD cars manage in dry weather, and taking it saves roughly two and a half kilometres of walking. After heavy rain, leave the car at the first one.

Past the second car park the route passes Stuðlafoss, a waterfall framed by its own basalt columns and worth the stop on its own. The last stretch drops to the river, where the path turns muddy and chains and ropes are fixed to the rock to help you down.

This is where the photographs come from. Columns curve overhead on both banks, the water runs fast and pale below, and the scale only registers when somebody in your group stands at the bottom of a wall.

What it costs

The canyon itself is free. The charges are for parking and plumbing.

Facilities, or the lack of them

Grund has toilets, covered seating and a water refill point. The east side has nothing: no toilet, no shelter, no water, no signal worth relying on. Whatever you need for two hours you carry in, and you carry the rubbish out.

There is no café at either car park and no shop between the Ring Road and the canyon. The nearest supplies are in Egilsstaðir.

Staying safe on the rock

Two things catch people out. The first is water: it drips constantly off the columns onto the path near the descent, and wet basalt with a film of silt on it is genuinely slippery. Boots with grip matter more here than the flat profile of the walk suggests.

The second is the river. The Jökulsá á Dal still carries around 95 m³/s past the columns, cold and fast, and the rocks people scramble onto for photographs sit right at the edge of it. Nobody is going to fish you out. Keep off the wet rock at the waterline and take the photograph from a metre back.

When the water is turquoise

This is the question that decides your trip, and the answer is seasonal rather than meteorological. Clear reservoir water and low sediment give the blue-green colour from roughly March to July. As summer melt increases, the glacial load rises and the river turns grey-brown, sometimes as early as late July and reliably by late August into September.

So the season for the canyon and the season for the colour are not the same thing. June and July give you both. September gives you an accessible canyon with a grey river, which is still a striking place and not what you saw on Instagram.

• March to July: the turquoise window, though the tracks may still hold snow early on
• June to October: the practical visiting season for both sides
• Late July onwards: colour fades as meltwater rises
• November to March: ice on the descent, short daylight, and no guided trips from the coast

What else is in Jökuldalur

The valley you drive up to reach the canyon is worth more than the twenty minutes most itineraries give it. Rjúkandi falls down a mossy cliff a short walk from the road and appears on most guided trips as a photo stop. Klaustursel, the farm at the east-side trailhead, has kept reindeer and other animals and is part of why the herd is associated with this valley at all.

Jökuldalur is also one of the emptiest inhabited valleys in Iceland. The farms are far apart, the river cuts deep, and outside the canyon car parks you can drive for stretches without meeting anyone. That emptiness is half the reason the place felt like a discovery in 2016 rather than a new viewing platform.

Other columnar basalt in Iceland, and why this one is different

Iceland is not short of basalt columns. Svartifoss in Skaftafell drops over a fan of them and gave Reykjavík's Hallgrímskirkja its shape. Reynisfjara on the south coast has the stacked wall behind the black sand that every south-coast bus stops at. Hljóðaklettar in the north has whole echoing chambers of them.

What Stuðlagil has that none of those do is a canyon of columns with a river running through the middle of it. At Svartifoss you look at a cliff; here you stand between two walls of them with water underneath. The scale is the point, and it is the reason a place that has been findable for less than twenty years now appears on more Iceland itineraries than sites people have visited for a century.

Staying nearby

Nobody sleeps at the canyon. Egilsstaðir, an hour away, is the practical base for the east: it has the supermarkets, the fuel, the airport and most of the beds, and it puts you within reach of Vök Baths, Hengifoss and Hallormsstaður as well as the canyon.

A handful of farms and guesthouses in Jökuldalur itself take guests in summer, which is the option for anyone who wants to be at the east-side car park at seven in the morning before the first coach. Book those early; the valley has very few rooms in it.

Off a cruise ship the question does not arise. You have the hours your ship gives you and the drive takes three of them.

Farm land, drones and litter

Both sides of the canyon sit on private farmland. The car parks, the paths and the staircase were built and are maintained by the farming families who own it, which is what the 1,000 ISK parking fee pays for.

That carries some obligations. Stay on the marked tracks rather than cutting across grazing land, close gates behind you, and take everything out with you, because there is no bin on the east side and no one is paid to empty one. Drones need the landowner's permission and are unwelcome over the colony of photographers on a busy afternoon in any case. None of this is signposted at length. It is assumed.

• Hiking shoes with grip, for wet basalt rather than for distance
• A waterproof jacket and trousers; the valley funnels rain and there is no shelter
• Water and food for the whole visit, since nothing is sold at either car park
• A card for the toilets at Grund and the Parka parking app
• A camera with a polariser if you have one, for the glare on the water
• A bag for your rubbish, which leaves with you

Winter, and why almost nobody goes

The canyon does not close, because there is nothing to close. What happens is that the metal staircase on the west side ices, the east-side track turns to frozen ruts, and daylight shrinks to four or five usable hours in December.

People who do make it in February get the clearest water of the year, snow on the columns and the place to themselves, and they get it in a 4x4 with proper tyres and a weather forecast open on the phone. Northern lights over the gorge are a real photograph and a genuinely bad idea to attempt alone on ice in the dark.

From Seyðisfjörður the question is settled for you: the cruise season ends in September and the Fjarðarheiði pass above the town shuts in storms through the winter.

Photography

The east side, without much competition. The gorge faces in a way that gives even, soft light under cloud, which is what you usually get, and hard midday sun tends to blow out the water while leaving the columns in shadow.

A polariser helps with the surface glare on the river. A wide lens handles the walls, but the shot most people miss is the tight one: three or four columns and the water, without the sky in it. And put a person in frame somewhere, because nothing else in the picture gives the scale away.

Combining it with something else

Most trips pair the canyon with one of three things, and the pairing is what fills a day out of Seyðisfjörður.

• Rjúkandi waterfall, in the Jökuldalur valley on the way, a 20-minute stop that costs nothing
• Vök Baths, floating geothermal pools 32 minutes from the pier, included on two guided trips
• The Reindeer Park, where rescued calves from Iceland's only wild herd live, on one trip
• Gufufoss, 27 m and four minutes from the pier, which nearly every canyon trip stops at on the way back

How busy it gets, and how to miss it

Ten years ago this was a place two people knew about. In July the west-side car park now holds coaches and the platform has a queue for the good corner of the railing.

The pattern is predictable, because it is set by where everyone sleeps. Coaches out of Egilsstaðir and the cruise trips from Seyðisfjörður arrive between eleven and three, and both sides are busiest in that window. Before nine and after six, the east-side track is close to empty even in high summer.

On a port call you have no choice: your coach lands in the middle of the day with all the others, and an hour at the platform is still an hour at the platform. Driving yourself, the difference between arriving at eight and arriving at noon is the difference between a gorge and a viewpoint with a crowd on it.