Every Step - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 2

to be delicate webs of snow criss-crossing the rock faces were
in fact immense tracts of ice clinging to the mountainsides in
motionless cascades.
From its rocky perch, Rothera looked out across a bay
rimmed with mountains where chaotic icefalls filled the spaces
between the peaks and covered the ground to the shore. The
confusion of fractured ice looked almost frothy, so that the
mountains took on the appearance of courtiers wearing fussy
cravats and frills of lace.
Over the next twenty-eight months I spent a lot of time
gazing out from the station at the profile of those mountains
and it became as familiar to me as my garden at home. When
the weather was relatively warm I'd sit on the veranda outside
the base chatting to friends and colleagues as the midnight sun
lit the crest of the mountains. Then, as the days darkened into
winter and Rothera emptied, I'd often watch through the ice-
rimmed window of my office as the sky turned vibrant shades
of pink, orange and indigo, staining the snow-covered slopes.
The bay that had been a dark slash of ice-speckled sea when
I'd arrived gradually froze until the scenery was one unbroken
landscape of white. As the temperatures got colder, tiny wisps
of steam rose from myriad cracks in the glaciers that poured
into the sea from the flanks of each peak. The steam looked
like smoke from unseen campfires, as if there was a hidden
community living deep in the fissures.
By midwinter the sun was too weary to rise above the horizon
and the only light was a faint cinnamon glow for a few hours
a day. Sometimes this was enough to see a reflected glimmer
from the snow-encased summits and to be able to trace the
line of their backs. When the moon was bright the mountains
reappeared as clearly as if the sun had returned. The silver