Breaking Point: Fatal Ice Cave Accident Raises Big Questions For Tourism Safety

Ever since the dawn of Iceland’s tourism boom, there have been countless examples of visitors to the island making decisions that are misinformed, foolish, or downright dangerous. From people picnicking on floating icebergs to the woman who joined a search party to look for herself, there’s plenty of Darwinist humour to be found in the misadventures of Iceland’s summer visitors.

However, what happened at Breiðamerkurjökull on Sunday, August 25 is categorically not one of these events.

You may know the story by now. A group of 23 tourists were taken on a visit to an ice cave during warm weather, with the increased glacial melt that entails. An ice wall collapsed, killing an American tourist and injuring his pregnant fiancée.

Two more people were suspected missing, prompting a large-scale search effort involving 200 people and two helicopters. Volunteers worked with minimal equipment over two days on the treacherous glacier, until the search was abruptly called off. It turned out the tour company — Ice Pic Journeys, started in 2019 by US citizens Michael Ward Reid and Ryan Matthew Newburn (pictured below) — provided what the police called ‘misleading information’ on the tour’s participants, and the missing people did not exist.

When a tragedy like this occurs, the gut reaction is to look for those responsible. Much of the attention has fallen on Ice Pic Journeys, who took a large group of tourists into an ice cave during a time of year when it is universally regarded as exceptionally dangerous to do so.

But there’s much more at play here than the tragically reckless decisions of a single organisation. How did that company gain access to the ice? Who gave them the permits? What safety procedures were in place? And what sort of business practices are at play in a sector that’s growing so big, so quickly, that industrial scale fuck-ups of this ilk are even possible?

Playing with fire

Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson is sitting at his desk in front of a large bookshelf. We’re far away from ice caves and glaciers; his office at the University of Iceland is warm. A leading glaciologist and a climber with decades of experience, Magnús was asked in 2017 by Vatnajökull National Park to produce a report into the safety of ice cave tourism.

“In summer, the walls and the roof of an ice cave can get thinner by 10 centimetres every single day.”

“At that time, there were never any trips in summer,” he explains. “It was absolutely clear to most of the local people, the people who pioneered this kind of work, that it was simply too dangerous. The scope of the discussion was mainly about which time period of the year it would be safe for visitors to visit these caves.”

There’s quite a simple reason why an ice cave is so dangerous to visit in summer. The kind of caves that it is possible to visit in places like Vatnajökull are carved out at the base of glaciers by streams of meltwater. That’s why they’re often easily accessible and so stunning to look at.

But glaciers move — and they melt.

“From October to April, there is very little melting, if any,” says Magnús. “In summer, however, a cave can easily experience 10 centimetres of melting per day. That means the walls and the roof of the cave is getting thinner by 10 centimetres every single day. They can start to crack, and then they might even collapse — as we’ve seen. If you enter a structure that is unstable and at risk of collapse, that is dangerous. This should be obvious to everybody.”

Magnús and his colleague Jón Gauti Jónsson produced a safety report that formulated a number of simple safety checks that should be conducted before visiting an ice cave. In the two days leading up to a cave visit, and on the day itself, the outdoor temperature and wind speed should be checked. At the opening of the cave, it should be ascertained whether the ice is wet or dry. If water, loose material, broken ice, or cracks in the ceiling are found, then the cave is not safe. On the other hand, if there’s been snow, or the temperature is near freezing, and there’s no visible melting or water flowing, then it’s relatively safe to visit.

In Magnús’s view, applying this methodology in summer will almost universally tend to produce one answer: visiting an ice cave is not safe.

And yet, tours continue.

“They are playing with fire,” says Magnús. “If you go climbing on your own or with friends, and you decide to explore a cave, then taking the risk is a personal decision. However, there is a fundamental difference between somebody doing something on their own, and selling a trip to people that you claim is safe, but is not safe.”

The ice cave pioneer

When the phone rings, Einar R. Sigurðsson — also known as Einar Öræfingur — is driving his tractor in the shadow of Vatnajökull. He’s helping renew a landing strip beacon for the aviation company Isavia. “Hello!” he cries. “I just need to stop so I can talk to you.”

However, Einar is not an airport engineer. He is, in fact, the longest serving mountain and glacier guide in Iceland, and comes from a dynasty of intrepid Icelandic explorers. His great grandfather, Páll Jónsson, was the first person to climb Iceland’s highest peak — Hvannadalshnúkur, the top of Vatnajökull — in 1891. He guided numerous travellers and visitors to the mountaintop afterwards, making him arguably the first mountain guide in Iceland.

Einar himself has been climbing for decades, and began guiding people up Hvannadalshnúkur in 1994 as part of the company his father founded, ÖRÆFAFERÐIR. As well as holding the world record for the most summits of the mountain (327), Einar was also the very first person to offer tours of the ice caves.

“I feel a little bit sick to the stomach even talking about these things,” says Einar, still sitting on the tractor. “It’s nothing to do with what happened the other week. Through the years, I have developed a disgust for everything about the ice caves, and business in Iceland. About quality, and safety, and all of that.”

The caves are always changing

Between 1994 and 2012, Einar was the only guide consistently offering tours of Vatnajökull during the winter. Two other companies were in operation, but he says they would mostly go back to Reykjavík until the summer as there were barely any tourists during the winter months.

Einar says that pioneering ice cave tourism was something he did by chance. “Around 2006 or 2007, I showed some photographers the ice caves after getting some special requests from colleagues. I eventually started offering photography workshops and tours of the caves as part of my everyday tour programme. I think ice caves are great for photographers. I didn’t think they would be interesting for the average tourist.”

To Einar’s surprise, the ice cave tours caught on, with more and more regular tourists joining the tours. “I called them ‘the iPhone people’ at first,” he says, “because they were carrying around GoPros or iPhones rather than professional cameras.”

As ice caves became a highlight of the Instagram tourist trail, the industry smelled an opportunity. “There were these big companies in Reykjavík that saw the potential of ice cave tours, who thought this was a great product to sell,” says Einar. “They were pressuring us to offer more and more tours, and take on bigger groups.”

“Instead of turning to local experts for help with bookings, they started to be circumvented.”

What followed was an aggressive consolidation of the market by big business. Einar explains that initially, if a tour was booked out, then the local tour companies would offer to help fulfil the reservations. However, around 2015, this lack of capacity was no longer tolerated by the big players in the industry, and instead of turning to local experts for help with bookings, they started to be circumvented.

“Guys like me were hesitant about putting too much pressure on these caves with mass tourism,” Einar explains. “I ran few photography tours with a lot of thought put into them, and warned customers that they had to be flexible because the caves are always changing. But these sales offices saw that the local companies were always full, and that many more people wanted to go on the tours. So they just created their own companies.”

2015 marked a point of no return for the growth of the Icelandic tourism industry in many ways. According to the Icelandic Tourist Board, around 1.3 million tourists came to Iceland that year, marking a year-on-year increase of 29.2%. The next year, the numbers swelled by another 39%, to an estimated 1.8 million. Dozens of new tour vendors started setting up shop in places that had previously only had a handful of companies, and glacier tours — including ice cave visits — evolved into an industry all of their own.

Photo by Art Bicnick

Inexperienced people

Two major risk areas developed alongside this growth in the market. Firstly, the number of tours increased significantly, and spilled into the summer season. When Einar and his colleagues first offered ice cave tours, they ran from November to March. “After all these years, I’m still the first to stop. Around March 20, I don’t feel so good because the sun gets higher and warmer. It’s not always totally dangerous or anything like that, but I don’t see the need to keep going there every day. I need to monitor them for several weeks before I feel good about going to some of these places.”

Einar recounts how other companies started offering ice cave tours earlier and earlier, on October 1, and then September. “And several companies continue until the end of April, when the Easter sun is so much warmer,” he says. “Over the years, people have been pushing it: one more month, one more month. And at some point in summer, around the time of the accident, I found out that some companies were still running ice cave tours.”

“The problem is not ice caves. The problem is that we now have a lot of very inexperienced people doing these jobs.”

Secondly, the personnel running the tours changed. “There are so many new guides entering the market,” says Einar. “More experienced Icelandic guides who’ve been working for some of these big companies have gotten the message that, next season you will get less pay, but you’ll have to work twice as hard. So they resign from these companies. And the companies hire very inexperienced people from other countries who are willing to work for nothing in exchange for fun and experience.”

For Einar, this shift is the crux of the issue. “The problem is not the ice caves,” he says. “The problem is that we now have a lot of very inexperienced people doing these jobs. They are meant to be ice cave guides or mountain guides, but in reality, some of them have less experience than some of the clients in the tour group. And the most experienced person in a tour group should not be one of the tourists.”

The combined effect of a huge increase in tourism and the reduced collective expertise of the guides conducting them poses a serious problem for the safety of these tours.

Supply and demand

Steinunn Hödd Harðardóttir is the park manager of the eastern part of Vatnajökull National Park, where the ice cave collapse took place. She oversees everything from the day-to-day running of the park to the contracts that are signed with tour companies operating in the area. She personally approved the applications of the 27 tour vendors currently operating in Vatnajökull this year — including Ice Pic Journeys.

In order to operate in the national park, tour companies must submit an application for a 12-month permit. These permits are reviewed annually by Steinunn and her team, and must be in line with the safety standards set by the Tourist Board and the mountain guides association. Once approved, the tour companies have a licence to take people on glacier walks year-round.

“He assured me they were doing everything by the book, that they were making risk assessments regularly, and had trained guides.”

When Steinunn became aware that Ice Pic Journeys were offering summer ice cave tours, she broached the issue with the company’s owner. “I reminded them that this is not a safe thing to do at this time of year,” she says. “But they assured me they were doing everything by the book. That they were making risk assessments regularly, and they had trained guides.”

The company’s word was good enough for Steinunn. “We trust the companies that have a contract with us,” she explains. “Because they’ve agreed to provide experienced guides and follow safety plans and guidelines. The contracts are for 12 months, and the companies that are operating are going on glacier hikes which are relatively safe year round. So I trust them. I have no reason not to trust them.”

Like Einar, Steinunn has watched the gradual shift away from local guides. “A decade ago, the only companies operating here were local,” she says. “Local people that grew up here, know the area, know the history, know the stories, know the nature. But with tourism — as with all industries — it’s supply and demand.”

The park estimates that during the last 11 months — since the last contracts were signed — around 240.000 people have been on a glacier hike or an ice cave tour in the south of Vatnajökull. “That’s roughly 25% of all the people visiting the park,” she says. “Which of course increases the pressure on all of our infrastructure and staff. With more people wanting to go on these tours, some companies have felt the need to increase the supply — to buy more cars, hire more people. And at some point, they have thought: ‘we need to start doing tours in summer.’ But in my personal opinion, sometimes it’s just okay if a tour is sold out. It increases the value of the tour if sometimes it’s sold out.”

Photo by Art Bicnick

Safety and quality

People like Einar personify the spirit in which the Icelandic tourism industry was founded. It was built by knowledgeable, experienced people who prioritised caution, safety, and sustainability. The surrounding regulatory and legal frameworks, as exercised by Steinunn, were predicated on this expertise and diligence — and the assumption that all tour companies and guides could be trusted to uphold them.

There was little cause for concern, because things were running smoothly and largely without incident. And, for a long time, they continued to do so. But now, the cracks are showing.

So let’s address the elephant in the room.

Many of the tours to Iceland’s national parks and natural sites are not booked directly with the tour groups who provide them. In fact, they aren’t even necessarily marketed by them. These tours are, by and large, being sold by large booking companies who operate out of Reykjavík, hundreds of kilometres away. These companies have names and addresses, and so do the people who run them. And they have been heaping more pressure on the sector every single year, with exponential demands being placed upon vendors to fulfil bookings by any means necessary.

As the circumstances surrounding the ill-fated Breiðamerkajökull ice cave tour show, standards have changed as a result. Now, serious questions need to be asked of the authorities about how much accountability the companies involved will face. Unfortunately, the head of the Icelandic Tourism Board, Arnar Már Ólafsson, did not respond to multiple requests for comment in time for publication. So for now, these are questions that Icelanders must ask themselves — and their officials.

With several government ministries and the police currently engaged in an investigation into the accident, the dominoes are starting to fall. Mike Reid of Ice Pic Journeys is no longer a board member of The Association of Icelandic Mountain Guides, and it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing more answers. Key information is very shortly going to come to light about who sold the summer ice cave tours, who provided the vehicles, and who pocketed the profits. Once these practices become clearer, the industry will have a brief window of opportunity to take decisive action and stamp out these dangerous business practices wherever they are taking place — before something else goes terribly wrong.

“I have been saying for some time it would probably take someone dying for anything to change.”

Unless stronger rules and legal mechanisms are brought in to ensure safety recommendations are enshrined in law, incidents like this will continue to happen in future. “What happened on this glacier over a week ago could have happened on any glacier where tours are taking place,” says Einar. “For example, a few years ago, I was on a committee trying to improve safety and quality on tours. Then Guide To Iceland [Iceland’s largest online travel agency] sued the National Park, and we couldn’t change anything because there were legal proceedings. So this whole thing is so handicapped. They have no power or authority. And this has to change. I have been saying for some time it would probably take someone dying for anything to change. I just hope that, at the very least, because of what happened last week when this young man died, that things will move forward to where they need to be.”

Melting away

The trust that the Icelandic authorities have put in tour companies to do the right thing is part of what defines Iceland’s character. But as the ice cave accident shows, this trust can also lead to disaster. The rapid growth of the tourism industry — coupled with weak regulatory frameworks and an overreliance on good faith — has strained this system to breaking point. The demands of profit and capital are outpacing the capacity of ordinary people to deliver safe, sustainable tourism.

As a result, the foundations of that trust — rooted in knowledge, expertise, and ties to the land — are melting away. Push things too far, and the whole system begins to collapse. In the absence of accountability, trust becomes dangerous. It becomes deadly.

Additional reporting by Jón Trausti Sigurðarson