Life Raft - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 115

all the warning signs and turned my desire into reality even
though what I saw didn't fit what I knew. The lack of the
satellite domes, the lack of outlying buildings, the lack of
movement. Antarctica had fooled me. As if to match my mood,
the weather closed in, stealthy and silent, until I was enclosed
in a private, melancholic world of grey.
My brain wearily digested this latest blow as the wind rose
from nothing into a gale in what felt like a few minutes. I
paused to force the zip of my jacket right up to the top of
my collar so that the fur of my hood tightly enclosed my face
and offered some protection. Through my goggles I could see
a fur rimmed oval, a confined porthole looking out onto a
nacreous mass of shifting light and snow-choked air. I pulled
out my GPS and saw that there were still several nautical miles
between me and the Pole. Trudging forward I relapsed into a
glum routine, skiing for ninety minutes before stopping for a
reluctant break, shaking the blood furiously into my hands as I
continued on. It was warmer now than it had been a week ago
on the highest parts of the plateau but the wind seemed to drive
in the cold, like the wet chill of a dark winter's night at home
by the English coast that enters the bones no matter how many
layers are worn. I stared forward as I skied although there was
nothing to focus on and became aware of that familiar, dizzy
vertigo making my head spin. I searched for any slight contrast
in the snow beneath my skis as I passed over it or for some
hint of a horizon, no matter how faint, to try and stabilise
the spinning sensation. Instead I caught the suggestion of a
shadow in the flurries. It had sharp edges like my old friends
LOO-JW and SPT-11 but was bigger. As I got closer I could see
that it was a large, yellow, rectangular sign with writing on it.
It stood completely alone, isolated in space by the blizzard as if