Landmannalaugar: the coloured mountains that justify the journey

There is a moment on the F225 track, about twenty kilometres from the end, where the landscape makes a change that feels incorrect. What had been black lava and brown earth suddenly gives way to mountains striped in blood red, moss green, sulphur yellow and pale violet, all of it against a background of residual snow covering the summits even in August. The first impression is that something is wrong with your perception, or with the phone screen if you have been navigating by map. The second impression is that Iceland has been saving this for last.

Why the colours

The explanation is geological, and it is worth understanding before you arrive, because it makes what you see feel meaningful rather than merely decorative. Landmannalaugar sits in the Fjallabak Nature Reserve in Iceland’s volcanic interior, in an area of continuing intense geothermal activity. The coloured mountains are made of rhyolite: a silica-rich volcanic rock that forms when magma cools slowly underground, under conditions very different from those that produce the basalt covering most of Iceland’s landscape. Rhyolite has a chemical composition that creates different colours depending on which minerals are present: sulphur produces yellow, oxidised iron produces red and orange, copper and chlorine produce green, and combinations of these create the intermediate tones layered across the slopes.

The result is a landscape that looks as though it belongs to a planet with different chemistry. This is not a metaphor: at certain angles, Landmannalaugar has been used as a visual reference for designing extraterrestrial landscapes in film production.

The hot spring and what it means to arrive

The most immediate feature of Landmannalaugar is not the mountains. It is the forty-degree geothermal spring that emerges at the campsite and mixes with the Jökulgil river to produce exactly the temperature of a perfect bath. After four hours on the F-road, the vehicle shaken loose over lava tracks and river crossings, bathing in that spring under open skies and coloured mountains constitutes a kind of reward that few travel experiences can match. Those who arrive after two days walking from the south have an amplified version of the same sensation.

The Laugavegur and what it demands

The Laugavegur trekking route is Iceland’s most famous trail and one of the most spectacular in the world: 55 kilometres from Landmannalaugar to Þórsmörk, typically completed in four days with mountain huts at the intermediate points of Hrafntinnusker, Álftavatn and Emstrur. The terrain alternates between snowfields, unbridged rivers that must be forded on foot, plains of black obsidian and valleys with Icelandic vegetation. None of the four days is routine.

The Laugavegur huts have limited capacity and must be booked months in advance. The season runs from late June to mid-September, and July and August spots are typically reserved within hours of bookings opening in January. The Icelandic Touring Association (FÍ) manages the huts, and their online booking system is the only official channel.

For those without four days or unwilling to commit to the full route, the day hike to Bláhnúkur peak (943 metres, around three hours return from the campsite) is the most direct way to understand the scale of the landscape. The ascent is steep in its final section, but the view from the summit across the rhyolite mountains, snowfields and the valley below is worth it without qualification.

Getting there: the access problem

Landmannalaugar is 180 kilometres from Reykjavík, but those kilometres include roughly forty on F-roads that cross rivers and have no asphalt, no crash barriers and no confidence-inspiring signage. This is territory for high-clearance 4x4 vehicles. In a standard rental car, reaching it in good conditions is technically possible but genuinely risky, and rental insurance does not cover damage sustained on F-roads. Icelandic traffic law explicitly prohibits driving standard vehicles on F-roads, and the fine is significant on top of the actual danger.

The alternative is the seasonal bus from Reykjavík: Reykjavik Excursions and Trex both run direct services from June to September from the BSÍ Bus Terminal in the capital. The journey takes around four hours, and the schedules allow for either a day excursion or a longer stay at the campsite. Camping at Landmannalaugar is available for tents, and the FÍ huts have limited places that also require advance booking.

The season: July and August are the only months where access is reliably possible in normal conditions. In June there may still be snow on the tracks and rivers are swollen with snowmelt. In September the weather becomes more unpredictable and early snowfall is a real risk. Landmannalaugar does not forgive a lack of preparation.

The complete Far Guides Iceland guide includes detailed routes across the whole island, interactive maps and all the practical information you need to plan your Ring Road and beyond.