Imagine getting lost in a blizzard on a glacier in Iceland.

It started out as a beautiful day but suddenly you can’t see anything and the cooling power of the wind is so intense that it takes your breath away. Your traveling companions have disappeared into the maze of snow and you can’t reach them.

You panic as your realize that you’re on your own. Then you try to shield yourself from the storm with every possible resource, waiting and hoping someone will find you before it’s too late.

Minutes and hours snake by and eventually you lose track of time. Your whole existence is the snow beneath, above and to the side of you, blowing in from every direction, making every part of your body numb.

Just when you think all hope is lost and you’re about to slip out of consciousness someone grabs hold of you and asks if you are ok. You can’t believe it at first but then it dawns on you—you’ve been saved.

It’s impossible to know what it’s like being lost in a blizzard without having tried it but you don’t have to hear much of Betata Morzine Scott’s story to realize that it is an extremely traumatizing experience.

Scott and her 11-year-old son lost track of their traveling companions, a group of Scottish tourists on a ski-doo tour with Icelandic travel agency snowmobile.is, during a blizzard on Langjökull glacier.

They were missing for eight hours until a search and rescue crew found them. Three hundred people participated in the search, most of whom had to walk because the visibility was so poor.

A Coast Guard helicopter hovered above the mother and son but couldn’t see them although they were jumping and screaming. It must have been horrible watching the chopper fly away.

Scott acted correctly by staying put, making a shelter from the ski-doo and snow and keeping her son warm with her body. She saved both their lives.

Equally admirable were the efforts of the Icelandic search and rescue teams, collectively known as ICE-SAR. There is no army in Iceland and only a small Coast Guard, so the members of ICE-SAR are the ones we depend on in an emergency.

Practically every town in Iceland has its own rescue team where volunteers are trained to save people in all sorts of accidents and natural disasters.

A woman died after falling into a glacial crevasse on Langjökull with her son only two weeks before Scott and her son went missing. The boy was saved—an emergency crew member had to be lowered 30 meters into the crevasse, head-first, to get to him.

As admirable as these efforts are, we should all try to minimize the pressure on the search and rescue teams and prevent accidents whenever possible. The natural elements must be treated with respect and we must remember that nature can be a dangerous playing field.

The operator of the glacial tour last weekend, snowmobile.is, has been criticized for reckless behavior; for heading out despite a bad weather forecast, not keeping track of the group of tourists and for not being well enough prepared for emergencies.

The company’s managing director Gylfi Saevarsson, who is a former search and rescue team member and was one of the guides on the tour, explained his side of the story on RÚV’s news magazine Kastljós last night. 
 
Saevarsson said that the weather had worsened suddenly and taken the guides by surprise—they had never experienced weather conditions like that. They did take precautions but clearly it wasn’t enough.

So now the tour operator is going to improve its safety measures, for example by having all ski-doos equipped with GPS monitors and emergency packages.

While that is a welcomed improvement there should be uniform regulations for all tour operators.

Such regulations are currently non-existent in Iceland but after last weekend’s accident the government is looking into creating new regulations to improve the safety of tourists.

People traveling on their own outside in nature must be cautious as well. Consult with ICE-SAR or other experts, let friends know about your plans, don’t go out if the weather forecast is bad, dress warmly, and make sure you have some means of communication with the outside world.

Outdoor recreation in Iceland, whether hiking, riding, kayaking, river-rafting, snowmobiling or horseback riding, is an adventurous and rewarding experience, which I recommend to everyone. But safety must always come first. 

Eygló Svala Arnarsdóttir – eyglo@icelandreview.com