Forty-Six - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 100

would follow south to the bottom of the world. This meridian
is the route that all traffic in and out of the South Pole is obliged
to follow, including the SPOT convoy that I judged must have
passed through this same area just a few weeks before me. I
started to see multiple tracks in the snow, the deep chevroned
imprints sometimes bunched together in a single rutted band
and at other times spread out over 200 metres or more. These
loud echoes of man seemed rudely out of place in a landscape
so devoid of anything human and yet I was aware that I drew
comfort from this tangible proof that life was still out there
somewhere. It made the Pole feel tantalisingly close.
That day, I was determined not to stop and camp until I
was within one hundred nautical miles of the Pole. That was
my aim but neither my cough nor my goggles were being
very supportive. The cough had become a persistent irritation
that hindered sleeping, and transformed skiing into a halting
business of hacking and spitting. I'd be stopped in my tracks
every few minutes by a coughing fit that would bend me double
and leave me gasping for air with the effort, periodically
spitting blood-speckled phlegm onto the snow. The heaving
made my eyes water, creating uncomfortable globs of ice in
my eyelashes and steaming up the lenses of my goggles. The
condensation reduced my vision to a distorted haze and
gradually solidified to ice. It was a sunny day and I was on
the plateau, out of danger of crevasses, so I persevered with
translucent vision for as long as possible before switching to
my spare pair. It didn't take long for the coughing to fog up my
ice-free lenses once again and I resigned myself to skiing with
limited vision. So I didn't pay attention when I saw three dark
areas of shade ahead of me. I assumed they were just large
sastrugi. I didn't even really pay much attention when they