Built To Roam: A Hike 41 Years In The Making: The DC-3 Crash

On November 24, 1973 a Douglas Super DC-3, owned by the United States Navy, crash landed on Iceland's Sólheimasandur beach. The entire crew survived the crash and the wreckage itself was never cleaned up, left to rot in the unforgiving Arctic weather for the past 41 years. What's left of the plane now lies abandoned, partially buried in a black sand desert.

First Class.

Every once in a wile when planning a trip you get lucky. Sometimes you find a cheap hotel or you score discounted plane tickets. Other times it comes in the form of a hidden gem, something that not many people see, something off the beaten path that adds a sense of adventure to your trip. Everyone has their list of not-to-be-missed sights, but the experiences that define a trip are the ones that only the locals, and a hand full of lucky travelers, get to see. Sure the Eiffel Tower is great, but a tour of the Paris Underground makes for a much better story. This was exactly the case with the abandoned plane wreck.

Wasteland.

The second I found a picture of the plane on a Google image search of Iceland, I was hooked. I had to know where it was and how I could get there. This trip had been hard enough to plan, even for the sights that everyone sees, let alone for something like this. I skipped from website to website, finding tidbits of information until I had gathered enough. This, along with a satellite image of the crash site was all I needed to feel confident enough that I could find the plane.
So, on our third day in Iceland, we set out to discover a plane that had crashed over 40 years ago in the massive black sand beach that surrounds Iceland's southern coast. I drove the road backwards from Vik to the site which corresponded to my satellite images. Luckily, there was a car parked off on the side of the road next to a gate in the fence that ran for miles in either direction. There were enough 4x4 tracks going in to suggest this was the correct starting point. We packed out bags, and headed out into the abyss of black sand that lay before us.

Window Seat.

About an hour had passed and we continued to walk through a black sand wasteland with the ocean on the horizon, and the tiny orange speck of our car behind us. Suddenly, like a scene out of LOST, we saw the plane's broken body in the distance. Excited, we sprinted down to find two other people at the site. I started snapping away and within no time three or four more groups of people showed up, by Jeep, and began taking photos as well. Mark became the subject of an impromptu, and unappreciated photo shoot from some German tourists.

Ya!

We stuck around shooting pictures, and climbing in the wreckage for about an hour before heading back across the sand to our car. Day three also included some shorter hikes, which I will talk about in another post. Thanks for reading, Cheers!

Mileage: 5 Miles