Snæfellsjökull, (1,446 m), a national park, a central volcano and one of the most famous mountains in Iceland. Long thought to be the highest mountain in the country, probably because it stands alone and is the highest mountain rising straight up from the sea. Eggert Ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson (see Road 62, Svefneyjar) are the first people known to have climbed it (in July 1753). The trip was considered highly dangerous at the time, though travel on the glacier is common today. At the top there is a large crater, 1 km in diameter with cliff–walls up to 200 m high by Jökulþúfur, three crags on the crater rim, but open to the west. There have been many eruptions under and around the glacier, though none since settlement times. Craters under the glacier have mostly produced acid (light–coloured) pumice and lava but on the lower land west and southwest of the glacier most eruptions have produced basalt. The most recent eruption was probably about 1,750 years ago, to the northwest of the glacier. Eruptions have often caused enormous flooding, e.g. along the course of the river Móðulækur. Around the turn of last century the glacier was twice the size it is today, then it grew rapidly smaller until about 1960, since when it has remained stable and even grown in places. There are still many moraines that show the former extent of the glacier. To the east and southeast of the ice there are thick layers of pumice, which was mined until 1935 and floated down along Kýrskarð pass in wooden troughs to the Klifhraun lava field, where water was used to pump it aboard freighters. Pumice has been mined there, but is now taken to Ólafsvík. New Age and mystic groups world–wide believe Snæfellsjökull to be a focus of power. It first became famous after the publication in 1864 of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth.