The Last-Chance Tourism of Iceland's Glacier Raves

Weaving through the crowd, I pause next to Kali Van Horn, a 30-year-old architect from Brooklyn with glitter dripping from her eyes like crystallized tears. We share the moment as strangers, pressing our backs against the frozen wall as two DJs spin house and techno tracks in the heart of Langjökull—Iceland's second-largest glacier.

"It's healing," Van Horn says, as rainbow lights illuminate the ice cave's blue hues. Surrounding us are people wearing winter coats accessorized with light-up scarves, sparkly snowflake-shaped sunglasses, and hoods lined with lavender fur.

This is part of Iceland Eclipse , a festival on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, offering late-night raves, cacao ceremonies, and lectures on whale communication to 3,333 total attendees. With an energy akin to Burning Man, the vibe is distinctly hippie; guests are gnawing to get into heady discussions. Most are here to extend their experience of the total solar eclipse two days prior, for which they've traveled great distances and invested even more grandly.

This experience, an 11-hour, $600-price-tagged excursion called "Into the Glacier", is perhaps the most exclusive event on the lineup. More than ever, rare natural wonders and phenomena are gaining top billing for luxury travel experiences—and this one, both in ambition and vibe, is a standout, drawing just 100 attendees to commune with this 395 square-mile mass of ice.

As we drive from the festival grounds toward Langjökull, the stark landscape is punctuated by the occasional sprig of purple flowers. Spikes jut from the massive tires of our car—a vehicle bearing a Jägermeister sticker and the license plate JAGER (the owner just really likes Jager, he says)—which crunches over gravel as the Red Hot Chili Peppers blasts through the speakers, and ravers in the back seat discuss ketamine and the rise of AI. The cars climb higher on the glacier until they begin to get stuck. Then, when they inevitably do, drivers jump out and release air from the tires, redistributing weight so they can continue.

The rocks around us fade into sheets of textured ice as we drive onto the glacier, streams of clear water rushing through jagged indentations. This glacier is thousands of years old, our driver explains, formed from layer after layer of snow compressing into ice.

As we exit the vehicle, I notice a metal-wrapped entrance in the ice—a portal beckoning us to another dimension. We enter the passage, its walls carved entirely from the glacier. I'm still dangling my crampon—a spiked traction device for walking on slippery ice—in one hand when an Into the Glacier staff member swoops in, gliding it over my hiking shoe in a single fluid motion. "Cinderella treatment," he says with a grin.

I follow a faint beat as I meander through a 1,640-foot labyrinth— the largest manmade ice tunnel in the world —before stepping into a wider, taller space within the ice. It's designed like a chapel, with wooden benches and faux flowers forming a heart on the wall. Near the exit stands a bearded Into the Glacier tour guide whose name is Hjalamroli Hjalmrsson, I learn, and who tells me his age is "young and old at the same time." We're lucky to be partying in the Icelandic Highlands, he impresses upon me: 1,300 meters above sea level, surrounded by "500 billion tons of snow, water, and ice."

The sound dances around us. "It's very echoey. You feel the bass is bouncing off the icy walls," Hjalmrsson says. "The sound kind of drowns, but that's interesting. It's something that you can compare to a big warehouse."

Just two days ago, when I met with Iceland Eclipse's co-producer Fridrik Olafsson, 41, he told me that he chose not to haul up large amounts of audio or lighting equipment for the event—"the setting itself does the trick," he said, spreading his hands on the table. His wife was stenciling a drawing of a moon embracing the sun on his thumbnail. On his other hand, a crescent moon with a face howled.

Olfasson took a phone call four minutes into our interview, speaking in terse Icelandic, before telling me that three days of storms had ravaged the festival, damaging three main-stage tents, and ruining 50 glamping tents. He described roaring gusts of nearly 70 miles per hour, desperately tying down tents with heavy machinery, and crew members working for 24 hours to make repairs. "Us Icelanders would call it a windy day, but our foreign counterparts were absolutely shocked," Olfasson said.

Olfasson received permission from local authorities and the mayor for Iceland Eclipse excursions. He had previously collaborated with Into the Glacier —which offers daily tours inside Langjökull—while organizing a music event for Secret Solstice, an Icelandic festival he founded that ran from 2014 to 2019 and offered $1 million ticket packages for groups of six guests, including private jet rides and a personal chef. This post-eclipse event is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to upscale glacial experiences.

Inside Langjökull, I follow the steady pulse of music to a mass of 100 people swaying in a hypnotic trance. Hólmar Thor Filipsson, 52, an Icelandic DJ known as Hólmar (Acid Tourist), is playing back-to-back with Margeir Steinar Ingólfsson, 51, an Icelandic DJ known as Margeir. "Everyone there was experiencing something for the first time ever," Thor Filipsson tells me, later, back at the camp. "It was like the eclipse in a way, but more concentrated, and it felt a little bit sci-fi."

Ingólfsson operates on the same wavelength. "I even came with a special gift for the glacier from my friend, who is a glacier specialist," Ingólfsson, 51, says. His friend has collected water from glaciers around the world, and Ingólfsson placed a few drops near the DJ booth.

When I ask about the night's song selection, Ingólfsson says they took their cue from the glacier itself. Was the glacier in the mood for house and techno, I ask? "Yes," Ingólfsson replies. "That was the vibe that the glacier wanted at this time."

As the rave beats on, cans of pink vodka cocktails appear in our gloved hands. The beverage packaging suggests that "Flamingo" is an adequate description for a flavor—apparently, that means something like the nostalgic taste of liquified pink Starbursts. Iceland Eclipse staff members are on task with collecting trash in plastic bags, the goal being to leave the glacier just as it was found.

Hours later, our two-drink-maximums met, we exit the glacier and totter down to the Into the Glacier Klaki Base Camp, about 10 minutes from the ice cave's entrance.

I meet Lyndsay Klebba, a 36-year-old writer from Chicago , who is wearing a fluffy yellow hat and a pashmina decorated with spotted mushrooms. She decided to visit Iceland after a 23andMe test revealed her Viking heritage: "To be surrounded by ancient ice and listening to New Age music—it's just a clash of titans," she says. She spent most of the party tucked behind the DJ booth, her heart against the ice to feel the bass. She also wandered into an icy alcove and stuck out her tongue to catch droplets trickled from the ceiling. "The freshest water I ever tasted."

Klebba is the exact audience that Iceland Eclipse is after—those moved by the specialness of the glacier as a setting. "Ice holds a lot of history," says Mitch Morales, CEO of IMXP and founder of Iceland Eclipse. "The ice in the glacier is thousands of years old–I think about what was happening in the world when this ice was frozen, all the memory, and thinking about this as being a temple in the same way."

Morales, 41, is planning IMXP's "Eclipse Trilogy" of annual totality events. Just this month, he was scouting for the ideal 2027 Luxor site; he is considering Australia or New Zealand for 2028. His ambitions extend even further, though, he says: He eventually wants to host an eclipse viewing on the moon.

"In Egypt, there are stone temples that are dedicated to the things that came before them. In a way, I think that a glacier party is similar to that," Morales says.

Gazing out the window as the car crept down the glacier, Klebba observes small signs showing how far Langjökull's ice once extended. The glacier has lost an estimated 29 percent of its mass between 1890 and 2019, according to a 2020 study published in Frontiers in Earth Science . "Where we were right now would have been glacier probably 40 years ago," Klebba says. "The fact that we had to drive up several miles just to get to it makes you think about what's going on today."

Some travelers seek out landscapes threatened by global warming, a phenomenon known as " last-chance tourism ." Langjökull has already outlived nearby Okjökull, which became Iceland's first glacier lost to climate change in 2014 . Its name was shortened to Ok, dropping jökull —Icelandic for glacier.

"Knowing that this was the last chance to party inside a glacier because of climate change was a big factor in me deciding to attend," says Hayley Sharkey, 27, as our car jostles away from the ice. Sharkey is a Miami public relations coordinator who has adorned her blue snow jacket with faux-fur cuffs. "Future generations will not be able to understand how it felt to be inside a glacier. The feeling of natural ice surrounding you will be seen as a myth."

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler