Kerid Crater: I Drove Through a Blizzard for This Hole

My February trip to Iceland was going spectacularly.

And by spectacularly, I mean Iceland had already begun actively trying to unalive me.

There was a blizzard.

There was a flat tire on my tiny Icelandic rental car, which already looked like something designed primarily for driving between an airport terminal and the Hertz return lane.

And then there was my brilliant plan to spend the trip photographing the Northern Lights.

The aurora forecast occasionally suggested this might actually happen.

The Icelandic weather had other ideas.

Clouds.

Snow.

Wind.

More clouds.

Basically, the entire sky had been placed behind a giant gray privacy curtain.

Welcome to Iceland in February.

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DESTINATION: Kerid Crater

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THE GOLDEN CIRCLE WAS SUSPICIOUSLY WHITE

With the Northern Lights temporarily filed under Things Mother Nature Has Decided I Don’t Deserve, I started driving around Iceland’s famous Golden Circle.

Except there was a slight branding problem.

It wasn’t golden.

It was fucking white.

Snow covered practically everything. Roads disappeared into white landscapes. Mountains disappeared into white skies. The occasional roadside marker became an important reminder that, yes, there was apparently still a road underneath me somewhere.

But this is Iceland.

You don’t come here because Mother Nature is predictable.

You come here because Mother Nature has anger-management issues and excellent scenery.

Eventually my wandering brought me to Kerid Crater, a volcanic crater lake near Selfoss and one of the easier volcanic stops along the Golden Circle.

I pulled into the parking lot.

And there was…

Nobody.

Absolutely fucking nobody.

Apparently February does occasionally provide benefits.

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HOLY SHIT. I HAVE KERID CRATER TO MYSELF.

Kerid is roughly 270 meters across and about 55 meters deep, with a lake sitting at the bottom of the crater.

During summer, the photos are ridiculously Icelandic.

Red volcanic rock.

Green vegetation.

Blue-green water.

Beautiful contrasting colors.

Sunshine.

And presumably 43,205 tourists simultaneously trying to take exactly the same photograph.

My visit was slightly different.

Snow.

Ice.

Brown grass.

Dark volcanic rock.

Frozen-looking water.

And me.

Honestly?

I’ll take it.

I’ve visited enough spectacular places around the world to know that having a destination almost entirely to yourself can sometimes be considerably better than seeing it under absolutely perfect conditions.

Kerid might have been missing its famous summer colors, but it had something considerably harder to find on Iceland’s Golden Circle: silence.

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TIME TO WALK AROUND THE HOLE

There’s a trail running around the rim of Kerid Crater, so naturally I took a lap.

This isn’t some heroic Icelandic expedition requiring crampons, Sherpas and a documentary crew.

It’s a relatively easy walk around a very large volcanic hole.

But in winter, everything gets considerably more interesting because snow and ice have a wonderful way of turning otherwise normal walking into an impromptu balance assessment.

So I wandered around the rim, stopping every few minutes to take approximately 7,438 photographs of slightly different angles of the same hole.

Because photographer.

The views changed enough as I walked around to keep things interesting, particularly with the stark winter landscape surrounding the crater.

And with nobody else there, it felt strangely remote despite being one of the better-known stops on Iceland’s Golden Circle.

That probably changes dramatically in summer.

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YES, KERID IS ACTUALLY VOLCANIC

Kerid is part of Iceland’s absurd collection of volcanic landscapes, although you’re not going to find lava spraying into the air or the ground threatening to swallow your rental car.

For that level of geological fuckery, Iceland has other options.

I’ve stood around Gunnuhver, where geothermal steam occasionally erases the entire landscape, and later visited Fagradalsfjall when Iceland decided an erupting volcano would make a perfectly reasonable tourist attraction.

Kerid is considerably more civilized.

The volcanic activity here happened thousands of years ago, leaving behind the crater that eventually filled with water.

Today it’s essentially geology’s retirement plan.

No explosions.

No lava.

No immediate threats.

Just a giant hole filled with water that humans now pay money to photograph.

Tourism is amazing.

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SUMMER KERID PROBABLY LOOKS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

I’d absolutely like to see Kerid again during summer.

Not because my winter visit sucked.

Quite the opposite.

But because summer photographs of Kerid look almost nothing like what I experienced.

The crater’s reddish volcanic slopes become surrounded by green vegetation while the lake takes on that famous blue-green color that makes Iceland tourism brochures look like someone got slightly aggressive with the saturation slider.

It looks gorgeous.

I’m also assuming the parking lot looks like someone opened the gates at Disney World.

So there are tradeoffs.

Summer probably gives you Kerid at its prettiest.

Winter gave me Kerid without humanity.

I’m surprisingly comfortable with that arrangement.

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THIRTY MINUTES. DONE.

I probably spent about 30 minutes at Kerid.

That was enough.

Walk around crater? Check.

Look into giant volcanic hole? Check.

Water in hole? Check.

Take unnecessary number of photographs of hole? Obviously.

Kerid isn’t something I’d build an entire day around, but that’s also not really the point.

It’s an incredibly easy stop while exploring Iceland’s Golden Circle and a cool chance to see another piece of the country’s volcanic landscape without committing to some massive hike or potentially being cooked alive by geothermal activity.

And after a blizzard, flat tire and another spectacular failure in my ongoing quest to photograph the Northern Lights, walking around a frozen volcanic crater with absolutely nobody else there felt like a legitimate victory.

Later in the trip, Iceland would return to its regularly scheduled programming of questionable weather and ridiculous decisions, including visiting the DC-3 plane wreck on Sólheimasandur while the wind attempted to relocate everyone involved to Norway.

But for about 30 peaceful minutes at Kerid?

Iceland stopped trying to kill me.

Hole in ground. Check.

Water in hole. Check.

Pictures. Check.

Back into the tiny rental car.

Before something else broke.