FEBRUARY 2025 · ADVENTURE
Iceland — Nauthusagil Canyon
Nauthúsagil Canyon, South Iceland
The canyon is listed as a waterfall destination, which is technically accurate but misses the point. There is a waterfall at the end — roughly twenty metres, hidden until you reach it — but the canyon itself is the reason to come.
Nauthúsagil is tuff: volcanic ash compressed into soft yellow-green rock, then eroded by the stream over centuries into a slot canyon narrow enough to require wading. The walls rise steeply on both sides, covered entirely in moss. Not patches of moss, not moss in the damp sections. The walls are moss, thick and saturated, the kind of growth that requires a very specific combination of moisture and cool temperature sustained over a very long time. The colour is particular — yellow-green where light filters down, darker in the depths, almost luminous at the entrance.
The canyon itself is the reason to come.
Nauthúsagil Canyon — February 2025
The stream runs along the canyon floor. You wade it, or you find ledges and edge along above it, or you lower yourself over smooth rock while someone below watches your footing. One image shows a hiker crawling over a smooth boulder while the rest of the group waits in the water. This is the actual geometry of the place — not a path, not a route, but a series of physical negotiations with the rock.
The photographs composed themselves in the sense that the walls created the frame. Every wide shot was framed by tuff on both sides, the stream threading the bottom, figures in coloured jackets small in the slot. The canyon insisted on its own proportions. A portrait of someone in an orange jacket with the moss behind them: the jacket and the moss are almost the same saturation, different in hue, and together they read as belonging to the same world.
The water level was too high to reach the fall. We turned back through the canyon.
Hikers navigate moss-covered volcanic tuff walls in Nauthúsagil Canyon's narrow slot with flowing stream, South Iceland
Hiker crawling over smooth rock in the slot canyon surrounded by yellow-green moss and waiting group members
Portrait of hiker in bright orange jacket facing camera with moss-covered canyon wall and stream backdrop
Hikers wading through the narrow canyon stream with high vertical tuff walls covered in moss on both sides
Close view of fast-flowing white water threading between moss and rock in the tight canyon gorge
Narrow slot canyon interior with fast-flowing stream surrounded by towering moss-covered volcanic walls
Small hiking group wading through stream in the narrow canyon with hikers silhouetted against moss-covered walls
Smooth flowing stream in foreground with moss-covered volcanic walls soaring above, narrow slot canyon composition
Hikers in colored jackets exploring the canyon stream with towering moss-covered walls creating a narrow slot passage