Lake Mývatn and Powerful Dettifoss Day Tour from Akureyri
Max 12Pickup1.5 hours at the falls
From $401 per person
Visiting Dettifoss
Dettifoss is free, unfenced and open at every hour of every day. Almost everything that goes wrong on a visit here is about the road, the walk or the weather, so this page covers those three and leaves the rest to the tours.
Short answer. No ticket, no gate, no fee. Drive Route 862 to the west car park, walk about a kilometre in, allow an hour. Between January and early April check vegagerdin.is before you set off, and from October to May expect ice on the last stretch of path.
Opening and access — there is no gate
There are no opening hours to work around. Dettifoss sits inside Vatnajökull National Park, on the Jökulsá á Fjöllum, with a car park at each end of a public road and nothing between you and the water but a marked path. Nobody checks a ticket because there is nothing to check.
What is open, and when, is the road. Route 862 on the west bank is paved and carries limited winter service between January and the beginning of April. Route 864 on the east bank is gravel and closes with the first autumn snow until roughly the end of May. That single difference decides which rim you stand on and, in winter, whether you stand on either.
What it costs
Nothing. There is no admission charge to Dettifoss and no parking fee at either car park as of 2026, which by now makes it one of the last major Icelandic sites where that is still true. Nobody sells anything there either — no café, no kiosk, no shop.
The costs that are real are fuel and time if you drive, or a seat on a guided day if you do not. Day tours from Akureyri start at $209 per person and take seven to ten hours, four of which are driving. If you are already paying for a hire car and the weather is settled, the arithmetic favours driving; if you are not, or it is not, it does not.
Not sure which departure fits your day?
Every guided trip states the minutes it gives you at the falls, the group cap and what the fare covers. Sorted by rating and review volume, with the multi-day circuits last.
Getting there
From Akureyri it is about two hours each way. Published distances vary between roughly 133 and 150 kilometres depending on which way you come off the Ring Road, which is why the useful number is the time. The turn is signposted off Route 1 on the Mývatn heath; from there Route 862 runs north to the west car park.
From Reykjavik there is no sensible day trip: the falls are roughly 600 kilometres away and the products that reach them from the capital are six and seven-day circuits of the island. Dettifoss tours from Reykjavik sets out what those actually are.
How long to allow
| If you are | At the falls | Total from Akureyri | What you see |
|---|---|---|---|
| Driving yourself, in a hurry | 45 minutes | about 5 hours | The west viewpoint and back |
| Driving yourself, unhurried | 1–2 hours | 6–7 hours | Dettifoss, Selfoss, the canyon rim |
| On a day tour | 30–90 minutes | 7–10 hours | The falls plus Goðafoss, Mývatn and Hverir |
| Off a cruise ship | 40–90 minutes | 7–8 hours | A fixed circuit timed to your sailing |
| Walking the canyon | a full day | — | The 32 km route through to Ásbyrgi |
The signpost at the west-side junction puts Dettifoss 0.2 kilometres one way and Selfoss 0.6 the other. From the car park itself the viewpoint is about a kilometre; the national park lists the return walk as 1.5 kilometres and half an hour to an hour, and the Dettifoss–Selfoss circuit as about 2.5 kilometres and roughly an hour, rated easy.
What to wear and bring
- Waterproofs. A hundred metres of falling water makes its own weather. The lower viewpoint is inside the spray and you will get wet there.
- Boots with grip, not trainers. The last stretch is smooth wet basalt. From October to May it ices, and travellers have described needing spikes to walk it safely; guides on several departures carry them.
- Food and water. Two of the listed departures include a packed lunch. On the rest, and if you drive, there is nowhere to buy anything.
- Wind protection. The rim is a plateau edge with nothing upwind of it. Even in July the wind chill at the viewpoint is a different proposition from the car park.
- A head net in June and July if you are stopping at Mývatn on the way. The midges there do not bite, but there are a great many of them.
Useful tip. Go to the lower viewpoint first, while your camera is still dry, then walk up. Doing it the other way round means photographing the best angle through a lens covered in spray.
Facilities
Toilets at the west car park, and that is the list. No café, no shop, no shelter, no fuel and patchy phone signal. The nearest of all of those is Reykjahlíð at Lake Mývatn, about forty minutes back down the road, which is where most day tours stop.
Doing it with children
The walk suits children: it is short, level and gravel. The rim is what needs thinking about, because much of it has no railing and the rock beside the lip is wet and, for a good part of the year, frozen. Hold hands near the edge, and treat it as a place to stand and look rather than to run about.
Several of the listed operators state that infant seats are available, and one states wheelchair access with a note recommending a private vehicle for comfort. Where a listing says nothing about accessibility, we leave the row off rather than guess.
Before you drive in winter. Route 862 is not in winter service from January to early April. That does not mean it is shut, but it does mean nobody is guaranteeing it. Check the road authority the morning you travel, or book a Dettifoss tour from Akureyri and let the operator make that call — every one of them refunds in full if the answer is no.
Where to go next
If you have got this far you are deciding between driving and booking. The roads and access page has the detail on both rims, and Dettifoss weather and the best time to visit takes it month by month. For the falls themselves, what is nearby covers Selfoss, Hafragilsfoss and Ásbyrgi, and Dettifoss Tours lists every guided departure.
Tours that give you the longest at the falls
From Akureyri Port: Diamond Circle Guided Day Trip w/ Lunch
Lunch includedCruise pier80 minutes at the falls
From $209 per person
