Life Raft - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 116

dropped randomly from the sky. I skied towards it until I could
make out the words in black paint,
'Welcome to the South Pole'
I stood confused for a moment. I knew from my GPS that I
was still some way off from the Pole. I peered around the sign,
squinting into the increasingly dense whiteout for any sign of
the station but could see nothing. If the station was ahead it
was completely obscured by the snow being flung around in the
wind. The farce of my situation emerged through my confusion.
The scene had all the absurdity of a Monty Python sketch. If it
wasn't for the blizzard it might have even been funny.
I was eager to be moving again. As I skied away from the
yellow sign I could feel excitement building and noticed that I
was skiing faster than was wise but I repressed my misgivings.
Within striking distance of the end, my pace and my reserves of
energy didn't matter, I told myself. My only thought was to get
there as quickly as possible. The grey haze had grown so thick
that it started to look dirty brown. I still couldn't see any sign
of the station but flags appeared out of the gloom on my right
like a line of ghostly shadows standing to attention. I could
barely see one flag from the next but it raised my hopes that at
any minute I'd see something I recognised.
I knew from previous arrivals that navigating the Amundsen-
Scott base is a complicated affair. Having skied in more or less
a straight line for hundreds of kilometres, within the station's
perimeters I was obliged to follow specific routes marked by
flags to avoid wandering into science projects, active runways
or forbidden parts of the base. My heart sank as I spotted a
junction of not one but three flag lines up ahead, each identical
and each heading in a completely different direction. Without
being able to see the station building I had no idea which one