The little girl has tears in her eyes.

It is so happy about the first day of skiing in winter.

The tears let the merciless wind flow.

It whistles constantly at thirteen meters per second over the parking lot of the Bláfjöll ski area, which is located in the Blue Mountains, just thirty minutes south-east of the Icelandic capital Reykjavík.

Despite the biting cold, the little one waits with admirable calm until her parents and siblings put on their ski boots, sorted their ski equipment, put their gloves on their fingers, which had become ice cold in no time, and their helmets on their heads, and finally it was the few steps over to Bláfjallaskáli goes, the ski hut situated between a battery of practice lifts.

With its facade standing on a base of crumbling gray concrete and the dark, aged wooden boards, it looks more like a barracks.

The two chairlifts, which Magnús Árnason can always keep an eye on through the large windows of his office on the first floor of the hut, also look like relics from the old days of winter sports.

How can that be in a country as rich as Iceland?

Spectacular glacial lagoons, boiling mud pots

Árnason has been Managing Director of Bláfjöll since 2007.

So he knows what he's talking about when he complains that during the ski season, which runs from Christmas to the end of April, he can only open every other day at most.

"We operate up to a maximum wind speed of seventy kilometers per hour, but unfortunately we regularly exceed that," he explains with a shrug.

What's more, the snow here in the south-west of the island is also not entirely reliable and snow cannons are absent from Árnason's arsenal, which is at least as 1980s standard as the Bláfjallaskáli architecture.

Because of the uncertain opening times, Árnason only sells day tickets and doesn't even try to market skiing in Bláfjöll as a tourist activity.

They also flock to Iceland in large numbers in winter,

It is understandable that visitors prefer tours to spectacular glacial lagoons, ice caves, bizarrely frozen waterfalls, geysers, boiling mud pots, solfatars, the glowing lava in the Geldingardalur valley or hot springs instead of a skiing trip through time with an uncertain outcome.

Especially since Bláfjöll is no longer even the largest ski area on the island.

Árnason had to dismantle the Gosinn chairlift at the southern end of the area two years ago, the 40-year-old facility was dilapidated.

Two long T-bar lifts on the northern edge had previously gone out of service.

That's why only skiers from Reykjavík and the surrounding area come to Bláfjöll.

A world of pastels in the middle of the wilderness

It was also passionate skiers from the capital who founded the ski resort in the 1970s.

Initially operated by the local ski club, it is now owned by a coalition of the capital and five of its neighboring municipalities.

He runs it as a leisure activity for the locals, not as a commercial venture, which is also reflected in the opening hours: During the week Bláfjöll only opens from 2pm.

Almost two thirds of the entire Icelandic population live in the region, and Icelanders learn to ski in Bláfjöll.

They do this in a compact area that still covers one square kilometer, of which fourteen lifts more than half are pure practice lifts.