Gullfoss is a waterfall on the Hvita river in south west Iceland, about an hour and three quarters from Reykjavik, and it is the most visited waterfall in the country. The river drops in two stages, eleven metres then twenty one, and then turns ninety degrees into a crevice thirty two metres deep and two and a half kilometres long, so the water appears to vanish into the ground. The name means golden falls, from the colour the sediment and the light give it in the afternoon.
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It is the third stop on the Golden Circle, with Thingvellir and Geysir, which means it is the single busiest natural site in Iceland outside the Blue Lagoon. That is worth knowing and it is not a reason to skip it: the fall is genuinely enormous, the crowding is confined to the car parks and the upper platform, and in winter or at eight in the morning it is a different place.
And it survives because of a woman who walked to Reykjavik. In the early twentieth century the owner leased the falls to foreign investors who planned a hydroelectric scheme that would have drowned them. Sigridur Tomasdottir, the farmer's daughter at Brattholt, fought the lease through the courts for years, walked the hundred and twenty kilometres to Reykjavik repeatedly to argue the case, and threatened to throw herself into the falls if the dam went ahead. The lease was eventually voided. There is a memorial to her on the path above the fall, and she is a founding figure of Icelandic environmentalism.
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What Is Here
There are two viewpoints and they are different experiences reached from different car parks. The upper viewpoint, from the main visitor centre, gives you the whole fall and the canyon from above and is accessible by a short level path and a ramp. The lower viewpoint is down a long flight of steps, which puts you close enough to be soaked, and it is where the scale registers. In winter the steps close when they ice, which is frequent, and then the upper platform is all there is.
The path along the rim between them is where the Sigridur Tomasdottir memorial stands, and it is the view that appears in most photographs, including the first and third on this page.
The visitor centre has a cafe and a shop and the famous lamb soup, which is better than it needs to be. There are toilets. This is the most developed waterfall in Iceland and after Dettifoss, which has nothing, that is a relief rather than a disappointment.
Geysir is ten minutes away and is the other half of this stop. The original Geysir, which gave the English language the word, is largely dormant, and Strokkur beside it erupts every five to ten minutes to twenty or thirty metres, reliably, which makes it the one geothermal performance in Iceland you do not have to wait for. The field around them is boiling ground with a thin crust and marked paths, and the FCDO's hot springs warning applies here as directly as anywhere in the country.
Thingvellir, forty minutes west, is the third Golden Circle site: the rift valley where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart, and where the Althing, the Icelandic parliament, met in the open air from 930. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site for the parliament rather than the geology.
Beyond the standard circuit, the Secret Lagoon at Fludir and the Fontana baths at Laugarvatn are the local geothermal pools, Bruarhlod is a canyon on the same river reachable by raft, and the road east past Gullfoss becomes the Kjolur highland route, which is an F-road requiring four wheel drive and open only in summer.
When to Go
Any month, and the hour matters more than the season. This is one of the few Icelandic destinations that is genuinely year round: the road is paved and maintained, it is close to Reykjavik, and the coach tours run all year.
Summer gives you the highest flow from glacial melt, near twenty four hour light in June, and the largest crowds. The practical trick is time of day: the Golden Circle coaches run a loop that puts them here between about eleven and three, so arriving before nine or after five transforms it.
Winter is the better photograph and the more demanding visit. The fall partly freezes at its edges, the canyon fills with ice formations, the low sun gives two hours of good light either side of noon, and the lower steps are usually closed. Road conditions on Route 35 are generally fine and are not guaranteed.
The second photograph on this page has people in it deliberately, because it is honest: Gullfoss is a crowded place in the middle of the day and the scale of the fall is only legible when there is a human being in the frame.
Getting There
An hour and three quarters from Reykjavik on paved roads, and this is the easiest major sight in Iceland to reach. Route 1 east, then 35 north through Selfoss and past Geysir. The road is maintained all year and is normally straightforward.
Coach and minibus tours of the Golden Circle leave Reykjavik daily year round and are the sensible option if you are not otherwise driving: the three sites in one day is a long loop and the driving is the dull part. Self-drive gives you the hours the coaches do not occupy, which is the single biggest improvement available to this visit.
Icelandic driving rules differ from British ones in ways that carry fines of up to about five hundred pounds, and the FCDO lists them. KEEP DIPPED HEADLIGHTS ON YEAR ROUND, day and night, which is a legal requirement. Speed limits are lower than in the UK and the DRINK DRIVING LIMIT IS LOWER TOO. Suitable tyres are required, including winter tyres when conditions call for them. A UK photocard licence is valid for thirty days. Beyond the rules, the conditions are the thing: the weather changes fast, distances between towns are far greater than the map suggests, SOME MAIN ROUTES ARE GRAVEL OR DIRT, and some roads and bridges are SINGLE LANE WITH PASSING AREAS. Highland and interior F-roads need four wheel drive, open only for a short part of the summer, and where they cross rivers the instruction is to DRIVE AT FIVE TO TEN KILOMETRES AN HOUR and to understand that RIVER LEVELS CAN CHANGE WITHIN THE SAME DAY. Check the Icelandic Road Administration before every driving day rather than once at the start of the trip.
If you hire a car in Iceland there is one clause worth knowing before you sign, and the FCDO states it rather than hinting at it: THE WEATHER CAN CAUSE DAMAGE TO RENTAL CARS THAT IS NOT COVERED BY INSURANCE. Strong winds are common and throw up sand and ash that strips paintwork, and in its own words BRITISH TOURISTS HAVE HAD TO PAY LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY to repair hire cars damaged that way. Sand and ash protection is sold as a separate product by most Icelandic hire companies and is the one add-on that is usually worth taking. Two related points: BREAKDOWN RECOVERY COSTS IN REMOTE AREAS CAN BE VERY HIGH, and OFF-ROAD DRIVING IS STRICTLY CONTROLLED and illegal outside marked tracks, with large fines, because the vegetation does not recover.
One Gullfoss-specific driving note: do not continue past the falls onto the Kjolur route, Route 35 north, unless you are in a four wheel drive and it is summer. It is a highland F-road crossing rivers, open for a short season, and the FCDO's instruction about driving at five to ten kilometres an hour through water with levels that change within the same day applies to it. Hire agreements for two wheel drive cars exclude it absolutely.
Locally there are two car parks, upper and lower, both free, and they fill in the middle of the day in summer.
Is Gullfoss Safe for Women Travelers
The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in Iceland and the country has no /regional-risks page, so there is no partial advisory behind the summary. On terrorism it is unusually mild by its own standards, saying that ALTHOUGH THERE IS NO RECENT HISTORY OF TERRORISM IN ICELAND, ATTACKS CANNOT BE RULED OUT. On crime it says levels are LOW, with petty theft and antisocial behaviour PARTICULARLY AROUND BARS IN DOWNTOWN REYKJAVIK, which is the only location it names in the whole country. What the landing page does carry is a named VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS warning, and the detail there matters more than the headline: the eruptions since December 2023 have affected THE TOWN OF GRINDAVIK AND THE SURROUNDING AREA, and the FCDO states plainly that THE CAPITAL CITY, REYKJAVIK, KEFLAVIK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AND THE REST OF ICELAND HAVE NOT BEEN AFFECTED. So this is a named-town situation rather than a country-level one, which is the opposite of how a reader skimming headlines would take it.
This is a staffed, ticketed-free, heavily visited site in the safest country in the world, and personal safety is not the subject of this section. The FCDO's single named crime location in Iceland is around bars in downtown Reykjavik. Here there are several hundred other people, a visitor centre and staff. A woman travelling alone, including on a coach tour, will find this entirely unremarkable.
One sentence on Iceland's safety page deserves to be read twice, because it names the three things that actually hurt visitors and all three are things people come here to look at: GOING TOO CLOSE TO THE OCEAN, CLIFF EDGES AND HOT SPRINGS ARE COMMON CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS IN ICELAND. That is not a generic caution. The ocean here produces sneaker waves, which run far higher up a beach than the sets before them with no visible warning and which have killed people standing on black sand looking out to sea. Cliff edges in Iceland are frequently unfenced, often undercut, and made of material that gives way. Hot springs and mud pots are at or near boiling, the ground around them can be a thin crust over water at that temperature, and the burns are severe. The rule in all three cases is the same and it is unglamorous: keep back further than feels necessary, never turn your back on the sea, and stay on the boardwalks and marked paths in a geothermal area.
At Gullfoss the cliff edge and the spray are a single hazard and the ice makes it worse. The viewing paths run along the lip of a thirty two metre canyon. The rock and the path surface near the fall are permanently wet from airborne spray, which is slippery in summer and becomes clear ice in winter, and the lower steps are steep. Sections are fenced and roped and sections are not. The site closes the lower path when conditions are bad and people step over the ropes anyway, which is how the injuries here happen.
The rules are simple and they are the whole of it: stay behind the ropes, do not climb onto the wet rock for a photograph, take the steps slowly and hold the rail, and if the lower path is closed accept that it is closed. In winter, strap-on spikes over your boots make the difference and are sold in every Icelandic petrol station for very little.
At Geysir ten minutes away the hot springs clause is the live one. The ground is boiling water under a thin crust, the marked paths exist because the unmarked ground is not safe, and Strokkur's spray lands hot. Stay on the boardwalks, keep upwind of the vent, and do not put a hand or a foot in any pool.
Iceland runs a national system for exactly the situation a visitor gets into and the FCDO points at it by name. SAFETRAVEL ICELAND publishes route conditions and hazard guides and LETS YOU LODGE A TRAVEL PLAN, so that if you do not return someone knows where to look, and the FCDO's own instruction is to leave your plans and contact details either with your hotel or on Safe Travel. Alongside it, the Icelandic Met Office carries weather and aurora and seismic alerts, the Road Administration carries road status, and 112 is both the emergency number and an app that transmits your position to the rescue services. None of that costs anything, and in a country where SEARCH AND RESCUE MAY BE LIMITED IN SOME AREAS, which the FCDO says plainly because Iceland is inside the Arctic Circle, using it is the difference between an incident and a statistic.
Two small legal points, and the first runs the opposite way from most of Europe. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CARRY YOUR PASSPORT IN ICELAND. The FCDO suggests carrying some form of identification such as a photocard driving licence or a copy of your passport photo page, and keeping the passport itself somewhere safe, which is a welcome contrast to Poland, Czechia and Slovenia where carrying identification is a requirement. And IT IS ILLEGAL TO SMOKE OR USE AN E-CIGARETTE in restaurants, bars, on public transport and in public buildings, with a fine attached. Riding an electric scooter after drinking is treated as drink driving.
The Gullfoss Packing List
Permanent spray on a canyon rim, ice in winter, a boiling geothermal field ten minutes away and no shelter outdoors.
Merino base layers, and the spray is the argument here as at every Icelandic waterfall
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the right first layer in any month. The pattern at Gullfoss is specific: you walk from a warm car or coach into sustained airborne spray and stand still in wind for twenty minutes, then do it again at Geysir, then again at Thingvellir. You will be repeatedly wetted and repeatedly stationary, which is the exact condition in which a cotton layer stops working and starts taking heat out of you. Wool keeps insulating wet. A merino base layer bottom is worth having from September to May.
A properly waterproof and windproof shell
A Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket. Showerproof is not enough at a waterfall of this size: the spray is driven sideways and sustained, and what matters is a hood that cinches down, closable cuffs and a cut you can tighten at the hem. If you intend to do the lower viewpoint, waterproof trousers are worth having as well.
A fleece and, outside midsummer, insulation
A Columbia Fast Trek fleece year round under the shell, and a waterproof insulated parka from September to May. A Golden Circle day in February is several hours of getting in and out of a vehicle into wind, which is what insulation is for.
Boots with grip, and spikes in winter
Merrell Moab 3 waterproof hiking boots with Darn Tough merino hiking socks. The paths here are wet rock and steep wet steps along a canyon rim, and in winter they are clear ice. Grip is the safety item. Strap-on spikes over the boots are standard Icelandic practice from October to April and are sold everywhere locally for a few pounds; they are worth more than any other single thing you can buy here.
The small things
A dry bag or waterproof case for a phone or camera and a microfibre cloth, because spray will reach the lens and you will want to keep shooting. A swimsuit, since the Secret Lagoon and the Laugarvatn baths are on the same loop and an Icelandic geothermal pool at the end of a cold day is the best thing in the country. The 112 Iceland app. A warm hat and gloves from September to May. Sunglasses, because low Icelandic light off water and snow is strong. A reusable bottle, since the tap water here is among the best on earth. And an earlier alarm than you want, because arriving before nine is the single biggest improvement available to this visit.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women at Gullfoss
Emergency numbers: 112 reaches police, ambulance, fire and mountain and sea rescue from any phone including a locked mobile, and English is spoken. Download the 112 Iceland app before you travel: it sends your GPS position to the emergency services with one button and logs your location periodically so you can be found, which is the single most useful free thing a visitor to Iceland can do. For non-urgent medical advice the health service line is 1700.
Gullfoss has a visitor centre, a cafe, a shop and toilets, which makes it the most developed natural site in Iceland. The LOWER PATH AND STEPS CLOSE when they ice or when the spray makes them unsafe, which is frequent in winter, and the closure is not advisory. Check road.is and vedur.is before driving, both in English, and lodge a plan with Safe Travel Iceland for anything beyond the paved loop.
US State Department travel advisory: the Iceland advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/iceland, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital: the nearest hospital is in Selfoss, about an hour south west, and the national hospital is Landspitali in Reykjavik, an hour and three quarters away. A UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EU European Health Insurance Card gives you state-provided medically necessary care in Iceland on the same terms as a resident, which is not the same as free: Iceland charges patient co-payments for primary care and outpatient visits, so expect to pay something and keep the receipts. Travel insurance still matters and matters more here than in most of Europe, because the FCDO notes that EMERGENCY MEDICAL ASSISTANCE AND SEARCH AND RESCUE MAY BE LIMITED IN SOME AREAS and because an evacuation from a remote part of the country is expensive. Tap water is among the best in the world and buying bottled is pointless; the hot tap smells of sulphur because it is geothermal, which is harmless. Pharmacies are apotek.
Official health authority: the Directorate of Health of Iceland. THE NEAREST HOSPITAL IS IN SELFOSS about an hour south west and the national hospital is LANDSPITALI in Reykjavik, an hour and three quarters away. A UK GHIC or EU EHIC covers medically necessary state care on resident terms, though ICELAND CHARGES PATIENT CO-PAYMENTS so expect to pay something and keep receipts. DOWNLOAD THE 112 ICELAND APP, which sends your GPS position to the emergency services at one button. ONE LOCAL SAFETY ITEM WORTH MORE THAN ANY OTHER: STRAP-ON SPIKES over ordinary boots, sold in every Icelandic petrol station for a few pounds, because the paths along this canyon rim are permanently wet and become clear ice from October to April
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Reykjavik.
Official tourism authority: the Icelandic Tourist Board. GULLFOSS IS THE THIRD STOP ON THE GOLDEN CIRCLE with Thingvellir and Geysir and is the most visited waterfall in Iceland, which makes THE HOUR MATTER MORE THAN THE SEASON: the coach loop puts everyone here between about eleven and three, so arriving BEFORE NINE OR AFTER FIVE transforms it. THERE ARE TWO VIEWPOINTS from separate car parks, the UPPER one level and accessible and the LOWER one down a long flight of steps that CLOSE WHEN THEY ICE. THE FALL SURVIVES BECAUSE OF SIGRIDUR TOMASDOTTIR, the farmer's daughter at Brattholt who fought a hydroelectric lease through the courts and walked the hundred and twenty kilometres to Reykjavik repeatedly to argue it; there is a memorial on the rim path. DO NOT CONTINUE PAST THE FALLS ONTO THE KJOLUR HIGHLAND ROUTE unless you are in a four wheel drive in summer, because hire agreements for two wheel drive cars exclude it absolutely
Arrive before nine or after five. The Golden Circle coaches occupy the middle of the day and the hour matters more than the season.
Buy strap-on spikes from October to April. A few pounds in any petrol station, and worth more than anything else you can buy in Iceland.
If the lower path is closed, it is closed. People step over the ropes onto wet rock above a thirty two metre canyon, and that is how the injuries happen here.
Do not drive past the falls onto Route 35 north. That is the Kjolur highland F-road, summer only, four wheel drive only, and excluded from small-car hire agreements.
Solo women safety assessment: Gullfoss is a staffed, heavily visited site in the country ranked safest in the world, so personal safety is genuinely not the subject here, and padding this section as though it were would be dishonest. The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in Iceland and no regional risks page, says of terrorism only that ALTHOUGH THERE IS NO RECENT HISTORY OF TERRORISM IN ICELAND ATTACKS CANNOT BE RULED OUT, and describes crime levels as LOW with the single location named in the whole country being AROUND BARS IN DOWNTOWN REYKJAVIK. Here there are several hundred other people, a visitor centre and staff, and a woman travelling alone, on a coach tour or driving, is unremarkable. WHAT THE ADVISORY IS ACTUALLY ABOUT IS THE LANDSCAPE, and its key sentence names the three things that hurt visitors to Iceland, all of which are things people come to see: GOING TOO CLOSE TO THE OCEAN, CLIFF EDGES AND HOT SPRINGS ARE COMMON CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS IN ICELAND. Two of the three are on this itinerary. At Gullfoss the cliff edge and the spray are one hazard: the paths run along the lip of a thirty two metre canyon, the rock and path surface near the fall are permanently wet and slippery and become CLEAR ICE in winter, the lower steps are steep, and some sections are roped while others are not. The site closes the lower path when it is unsafe and people step over the ropes anyway, which is how injuries happen here; strap-on spikes from October to April are the single best purchase available. At Geysir ten minutes away the hot springs clause is live, with boiling water under a thin crust, marked boardwalks that exist because the unmarked ground is not safe, and hot spray from Strokkur. The other risk is the car: the FCDO states that WEATHER DAMAGE TO RENTAL CARS IS NOT COVERED BY INSURANCE, requires dipped headlights year round, notes a lower drink-drive limit than the UK, and warns about gravel routes and single-lane bridges; the Kjolur F-road starts where this road ends.
Reading On
Gullfoss is one stop on a loop and the loop is most people's first day in Iceland. The Reykjavik packing list covers the capital an hour and three quarters west, where you will be staying and where the FCDO's one named crime location actually is. The Dettifoss packing list covers the most powerful waterfall in Europe in the far north east, which is this one's opposite in every respect including having no facilities at all. The Akureyri packing list covers the northern capital and the Hofn packing list the glacier coast in the south east. For the country as a whole the Iceland travel guide for women and the Iceland packing list carry the ring road, the driving rules and the practical material in full. For why wool is the only fibre that works when you are repeatedly soaked and repeatedly standing still, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
