From spectacular summit-to-sea ski runs to the comforts of Deplar Farm, Eleven Experience combines extraordinary adventure with five-star hospitality on Iceland’s remote Troll Peninsula.
There are ski destinations, and then there is Iceland. The Troll Peninsula, jutting into the North Atlantic from the island’s northern coast, is a landscape of almost theatrical severity — black volcanic ridges draped in snow, fjords cutting deep into the land, and a sky so vast and changeable it feels almost animate. To ski here, dropped by helicopter onto a remote summit with nothing but the sea glittering far below and silence pressing in on all sides, is to experience something entirely removed from the groomed pistes and crowded lifts of the conventional ski world.
Eleven Experience, the American luxury adventure operator behind properties from Patagonia to British Columbia, bases its Icelandic heliskiing programme at Deplar Farm, a former sheep farm in the Fljót Valley reimagined as one of the world’s most compelling remote lodges. The property hosts up to 24 guests across 12 rooms, and its interiors — defined by Nordic restraint, floor-to-ceiling glass, and warm local materials — feel simultaneously wild and deeply considered.
Facilities extend to a 5,000-square-foot spa with geothermally heated indoor and outdoor pools, a Viking sauna and cold plunge, a well-stocked bar and lounge with billiard table and table tennis, a private cinema, and a chambre séparée tucked within a wine cave, ideal for intimate dinners accompanied by a cellar stocked with both old-world classics and new-world discoveries. On fine spring days, the outdoor terraces come into their own, inviting guests to linger with a glass while the light stretches long across the mountains.
The skiing itself is not a replica of the deep Canadian powder experience and nor should you expect it to be. Iceland’s maritime snowpack produces something different — particularly in the later weeks of the season, when spring corn snow arrives with a buttery, forgiving quality unlike anything found in the Alps or Rockies. The runs across the Troll Peninsula are wide open, tree-free, and largely accessible to skiers of varied abilities, from confident intermediates to seasoned experts.
Eleven’s guides, all certified and highly experienced in Icelandic terrain, operate with a 4:1 guest-to-guide ratio, maintaining safety as an absolute priority when working across wild, unprepared terrain with no lift infrastructure or piste patrol beneath you. The helicopters are Airbus A-Star B3 aircraft, and a particular advantage of heliskiing in Iceland — one the Alps fundamentally cannot offer — is the freedom to land anywhere on the mountain. There are no regulated landing zones, no prescribed corridors; the entire landscape is yours to read and respond to. The summit-to-sea runs here, descending from high ridges all the way to the ocean’s edge, are among the most memorable ski lines anywhere in the world.
When weather grounds the helicopters — and Iceland being Iceland, it will — the alternatives are far from consolation prizes. Eleven offers whale watching from traditional oak boats in the nearby coastal village, snowmobiling across frozen tundra with stops at the lodge’s remote outpost cabins, ski touring directly from Deplar’s front door, snowshoeing through the otherworldly Troll Peninsula valleys, fat biking across snow-covered terrain, sea kayaking along the dramatic Haganesvík coastline, cross-country skiing, stand-up paddleboarding, and horseback riding on Iceland’s iconic Viking-descended horses. For those inclined to simply absorb the landscape, a morning in the geothermal pool watching light shift over the mountains is a pursuit wholly unto itself.
Meals across breakfast, lunch and dinner are prepared daily by Eleven’s resident chefs using locally sourced produce — Arctic char, Icelandic lamb, skyr — celebrating a culinary heritage deeply tied to this extraordinary island. The wine cellar supplies the evenings, with a selection broad enough to satisfy the most discerning palate.
At around three hours from London, four from Nice, and six from New York, Iceland is closer than its remoteness suggests. And if you find yourself on this elemental island, a stay at Deplar Farm is not simply recommended — it is the definition of luxury encountered on its own terms: raw, humbling nature met with world-class finesse, in a place unlike anywhere else on earth.
Eleven Deplar Farm heli-ski season runs from late February to early June. Nightly rates from $8,222 based on double occupancy, or $5,518 based on single occupancy. elevenexperience.com
