A British tourist who was skiing across Iceland for charity, from the north southwards to Vík, called the emergency services on Monday morning after breaking his wrist by the lake Vegamótavatn to the east of Hofsjökull glacier.
An ICE-SAR truck. Copyright: ICE-SAR.
The man stayed in his tent while four jeeps and four ski-doos from the ICE-SAR search and rescue teams Dalbjörg in Eyjafjörður and Súlur in Akureyri drove to the site. The road conditions were poor for cars but good for ski-doos, a press release states.
At first it was uncertain whether a helicopter from the Icelandic Coast Guard could pick the man up due to poor weather conditions but it managed to arrive in the early afternoon and took him to a hospital in Reykjavík, ruv.is reports.
The same day the police in Selfoss, south Iceland, was notified of another British tourist, a woman who had slipped on ice by the waterfall Gullfoss and was believed to have fractured both her arms in the fall, ruv.is reports.
She was taken to the South Iceland Healthcare Institute.
On Sunday night, a Danish tourist ran into trouble when her tent blew away in a storm by the waterfall Glymur in west Iceland. A search and rescue team came to her assistance.
The following day the woman visited the staff of the emergency hotline 112 (Neyðarlínan) with a basket of goodies to thank them for their part in the rescue, visir.is reports.
She also asked them to pass her gratitude on to the search and rescue team members; in addition to having kissed them after they chauffeured her back to inhabited areas in the early hours that morning.
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ESA
