Deep Snow at Deplar Farm
“We have a lot of snow, but the old men say we haven’t seen any snow yet,” Þorsteinn Guðmundsson tells Morgunblaðið . He works for Eleven Experience, the company that operates the Deplar Farm luxury hotel in Fljót, Skagafjörður, North Iceland.
Þorsteinn was busy clearing snow from the buildings and equipment on Tuesday. The company owns the farmland Stóra-Brekka, where snowmobiles, four-wheelers and buggy cars are stored. The snow in that area was quite deep.
The road to Deplar Farm and Þrasastaðir farm was ploughed Friday last week, after having been closed for 11 days. The snow on the road was between one and two meters (10-20 ft) deep. While the road was closed, Deplar Farm was accessibly by snowmobile only.
No guests have visited Deplar Farm since last fall, due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions worldwide. The ski season generally starts March 20, when heli-skiing has been offered, among other things.
“The hotel is fully booked for the spring and summer,” Þorsteinn states. “We had to move last year’s reservations to this year, and new reservations have been made.”
He is in charge of angling for Eleven Experience in Iceland – in the rivers Fljótaá and Húseyjarkvísl, among others. Normally, the first anglers arrive in the spring and keep coming all summer. No one knows for sure when they or other tourists will be able to arrive this year.