Stuðlagil

Stuðlagil is a canyon in the Jökuldalur valley in east Iceland, carved by the Jökla river (Jökulsá á Dal) through basalt columns. The Jökla is a glacial river. Since the Kárahnjúkar dam was completed in 2009, the flow in the gorge has dropped from about 205 to around 95 cubic metres per second, which exposed the hexagonal columns. The canyon only became well known from 2016, when the photographer Einar Páll Svavarsson described and named it.

On the west side, near the Grund farm, there is a viewing platform with a car park and toilets, reached by road 923, about 19 km of gravel from the Ring Road that is open to all cars all year. To see the columns up close from the east side, hike from Klaustursel: about 5 km there and back from the car park at the Stuðlafoss waterfall, or roughly 10 km from the Jökla bridge. From August to October the river can turn grey-brown when the reservoir overflows; the canyon looks best when the water is clear.