Iceland reduces you to speechlessness, or clichés. Grinding up a hill that seemed it would never end, I felt like I was in the middle of a Planet Earth film. There was beauty in all directions as we pedaled Iceland’s thirty-four-mile Laugavegur route: We’d barely begun our five-day hut-to-hut trip and already had passed waterfalls, canyons, glaciers, rivers, and multicolored rhyolite peaks. We’d ridden over black volcanic rock, steaming geysers, and snowfields.
When I booked my plane ticket a month prior, I knew Iceland would be different from any place I’d traveled, but upon arrival, I was overwhelmed by its landscape and constantly shifting weather conditions. After many years of mountain biking in Scandinavia, the Alps, North America, Africa, New Zealand, and South America, my crew of friends wanted something exotic. We were up for an adventurous bike trip, yes, and Type 2 fun—but not too crazy, with good trails and huts and no bushwhacking. Stephen Matthews, Wade Simmons, and I
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