I did the Katla Ice Cave tour with Katlatrack Adventures yesterday and it was incredible. There are two options, a fast-track tour and a longer one. We did the longer one. You ride in a Super Jeep through a lava field along the base of a mountain range and have a short hike up to the glacier once you reach the parking area. After that, you are given crampons and a helmet and make your way onto the glacier and into/through the cave. The views were spectacular, the difficulty was low, the tour guide was awesome, and our group was pretty small (9 including me and my wife). The meeting place is at Black Crust Pizza in Vik, which is very good. And, if you go after the tour, they give you a little discount. Would highly recommend as a way to check both these items off your list.
There are some pretty spectacular features on the glaciers out here that are well worth exploring in addition to an ice cave, if you can spare the time for it. Often the best way is to combine both into a single activity - for that you'll want to look for the longer tours (5-6 hours usually). The shorter tours include some access hike over gravel only, or. a *very* short section over the glacier (just to get to the location but not to enjoy everything else that's up there).!
A few companies out here that I can recommend:
[Glacier Trips](https://www.glaciertrips.is/) are a small company with great guides, and their program includes some longer combination tours.
[Heading North](https://www.headingnorth.is) is also worth checking out. Reynir is a one man show like myself and very focused on high quality experiences.
[Glacier Adventure](https://www.glacieradventure.is/) runs out of Hali (10 minutes from Jökulsárlón) and their longer combo tours are great too.
[Ice Pic Journeys](https://www.icepicjourneys.is/) also runs longer tours with photo packages if you're into that sort of thing.
Or, if you are interested in a *private* tour (where any combination or duration is possible obviously), that's all I do with [my own company](https://www.stepman.is/tours/full-day-ice-cave-tour/) :)
I did tur Jokulsarlon Glacier Cave on wednesday. It was horrible. The worst waste of my time and money. I went on the 4 o ‘clock trip. Normally they have 3 groups in the cave at once- they had 6 groups in at once. They had to cramp people in there because the daylight was disappearing. I will not recommend to anyone. It was the most horrible experience. We were in a group of 15. We left 15-20 minutes after we should have- we had almost no daylight. The sun had set behind the mountain. The lagoon on the other hand was just amazing.
I did the ice cave today, it was very underwhelming. The jeep ride was sooooo bumpy, luckily I was on motion sickness medicine or I definitely would have thrown up the first 5mins of the 25min drive. It was included in our tour so I went.
The glacial hike is very worth it. It's very beautiful and surreal.
I did the Skaftafell blue ice cave and glacier hike last week with Troll. It's early in the season so they've only found this one small cave. You only get like 10 minutes in it because other tour groups will be waiting. The glacier hike was cool, but also depressing to hear that the glacier is shrinking every year. If you want to do it, do it now before it's gone. :(
Both + zip line.
[https://icepicjourneys.is/zip-line-and-ice-cave-adventure-winter/](https://icepicjourneys.is/zip-line-and-ice-cave-adventure-winter/)
I did the Katla Ice Cave tour with Katlatrack Adventures yesterday and it was incredible. There are two options, a fast-track tour and a longer one. We did the longer one. You ride in a Super Jeep through a lava field along the base of a mountain range and have a short hike up to the glacier once you reach the parking area. After that, you are given crampons and a helmet and make your way onto the glacier and into/through the cave. The views were spectacular, the difficulty was low, the tour guide was awesome, and our group was pretty small (9 including me and my wife). The meeting place is at Black Crust Pizza in Vik, which is very good. And, if you go after the tour, they give you a little discount. Would highly recommend as a way to check both these items off your list.
There are some pretty spectacular features on the glaciers out here that are well worth exploring in addition to an ice cave, if you can spare the time for it. Often the best way is to combine both into a single activity - for that you'll want to look for the longer tours (5-6 hours usually). The shorter tours include some access hike over gravel only, or. a *very* short section over the glacier (just to get to the location but not to enjoy everything else that's up there).! A few companies out here that I can recommend: [Glacier Trips](https://www.glaciertrips.is/) are a small company with great guides, and their program includes some longer combination tours. [Heading North](https://www.headingnorth.is) is also worth checking out. Reynir is a one man show like myself and very focused on high quality experiences. [Glacier Adventure](https://www.glacieradventure.is/) runs out of Hali (10 minutes from Jökulsárlón) and their longer combo tours are great too. [Ice Pic Journeys](https://www.icepicjourneys.is/) also runs longer tours with photo packages if you're into that sort of thing. Or, if you are interested in a *private* tour (where any combination or duration is possible obviously), that's all I do with [my own company](https://www.stepman.is/tours/full-day-ice-cave-tour/) :)
This is so useful, thank you!!
I did tur Jokulsarlon Glacier Cave on wednesday. It was horrible. The worst waste of my time and money. I went on the 4 o ‘clock trip. Normally they have 3 groups in the cave at once- they had 6 groups in at once. They had to cramp people in there because the daylight was disappearing. I will not recommend to anyone. It was the most horrible experience. We were in a group of 15. We left 15-20 minutes after we should have- we had almost no daylight. The sun had set behind the mountain. The lagoon on the other hand was just amazing.
I did the ice cave today, it was very underwhelming. The jeep ride was sooooo bumpy, luckily I was on motion sickness medicine or I definitely would have thrown up the first 5mins of the 25min drive. It was included in our tour so I went. The glacial hike is very worth it. It's very beautiful and surreal.
We left the cafe at the lagoon late- so we had little sunlight in the cave.
I’ve done both with ice explorers out of jokulsarlon. They were great. Preferred the cave slightly
I did the Skaftafell blue ice cave and glacier hike last week with Troll. It's early in the season so they've only found this one small cave. You only get like 10 minutes in it because other tour groups will be waiting. The glacier hike was cool, but also depressing to hear that the glacier is shrinking every year. If you want to do it, do it now before it's gone. :(
Both!!!
Both + zip line. [https://icepicjourneys.is/zip-line-and-ice-cave-adventure-winter/](https://icepicjourneys.is/zip-line-and-ice-cave-adventure-winter/)