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It Gets Worse
The hut was marked as an "emergency hut" on our map, but that was fine with us - a spartan hut was better than a tent, and all we really needed was a place out of the wind. We arrived at the hut, but quickly realized a problem. The hut was not "for use in an emergency", but rather "for use by emergency personnel". It was locked. We could see various emergency suits and equipment inside. No matter how many times we tried the door, this time it stayed locked. A bit dejected, we resigned to using the hut as a windblock so we could cook our dinner and try to dry some things that had gotten wet the previous night. We then headed over to a nearby lava field and set up our tent near the base of a cliff, providing a little bit of shelter from the wind.
During the night, the wind shifted. The tent rattled and began to come undone. I was tired from the previous night, and slept through the start of it. I awoke to find Dave holding the tent up from the inside, asking, "How can you sleep through all this?". I wasn't sure, but I was thankful he hadn't woken me up earlier. I really needed the rest. Although we were getting a bit of drizzle, the sun was shining on the tent wall so it didn't seem too bad. When we finally got a look outside, we realized it might be worse than we'd thought.
All around us the skies were a dull dark grey, except for a sliver of clear sky to the northeast (where the sun was). Soon even that was gone. We hurriedly packed up the tent and set off. The drizzle thickened and the wind picked up. Very soon, we were being blasted by a constant sideways rain.
Even before the weather turned bad, we had already planned a short day. Each of the previous days had been successively harder, and we needed a break. There was another hut about 12 miles to the south called Jökulheimar. It appeared to be a private hut, like the Botni hut we'd stayed in earlier. So, we had high hopes. All we had to do was survive the sideways rain, and we'd have a warm dry place to rest by mid-day.
The route continued through a nightmare landscape of black lava, and gritty grey hills. All distant views were obscured by the constant rain, and we had to walk in a hunkered-down stance to cope with the blast of cold water. We went near a steep walled canyon which opened into an expansive flat area with absolutely nothing to stop the wind and rain.
We finally crested a hill in the fiercest wind yet, and caught a view of the neatly painted hut down below - actually a series of about 4 matching buildings. It was now about 2pm, and we were thoroughly soaked and cold. We staggered to the hut like refrigerated zombies. A sign above the door greeted us - Jökulheimer - Welcome. The door itself was not so kind - locked no matter how hard we pulled.
Our joy quickly turned to despair as we evaluated our options. Really the only one was pitch the tent on a small grassy patch on the leeward side of the hut. Actually, we were quite glad to at least have this, since the surrounding landscape offered exactly zero options for wind protection. We got inside the tent and did our best to try to dry off and warm up. We had dropped in elevation a bit, so the chill wasn't too bad once we got out of the wind. We had also managed to run out of water. With all the rain around us, we spent the next 18 hours thirsty. There was a small well a hundred yards away, but getting to it meant getting soaked. We were lulled to sleep by the whistling sound of the wind whipping through a wire supporting an antennae. The rain and wind continued all afternoon and into the next morning.
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