Forty-Six - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 86

or the distance remaining to the Pole. I focused instead on the
level of fuel in the stove, the positioning of the mask around
my face, the packing of my few bags and the placing of the
satellite phone in my jacket pocket out of harm's way. Finding
my underwear still stubbornly frozen on the line, I securely
attached it to the outside of my sledge bag in the hope that
perhaps it would freeze-dry in the wind.
Barely two hours after first opening my eyes I was on my
way, head bowed into the wind, eyes fixed on the tips of my
skis ploughing into monotonous white. Flapping wildly in the
wind from the very back of the trailing sledge, like a proudly
displayed ensign towed ingloriously across Antarctica, flew my
frozen knickers.
My determination not to spend another day in the tent was
rewarded by the appearance of the sun late in the day. It was
an occurrence that had been so rare since I'd left the Ross Ice
Shelf that at first I wasn't sure what it was. I marvelled at the
great pools of silver that appeared on the landscape, spots
of such brilliance that they made the rest of the scene look
like scuffed steel. The spotlights of sunshine prising their way
through the cloud cover never reached me but the variety of
shade and colour at least fixed the position of the ground and
gave a hint of a horizon to aim for. The light wasn't bright
enough to create shadow and texture but it banished some of
the gloom and the eeriness. Now, instead of appearing ghostly,
the grey looked soft and soothing, everything blending gently
into an elegant smoothness. Patches of ice gathered the weak
light and reflected a pale luminous blue. My skis hit the ice
with a rasp but, noticing that the weight of my sledges seemed
to disappear as they trailed over the blue patches, I began to