Skiing in the Dark - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 188

comfortable in my own company as well as highly sociable
in order to handle such a small and tight community. Twice
a year each member of the wintering team was allowed a
'holiday'. We weren't able to leave the continent but we could
take snowmobiles and a companion for a week-long camping
trip into the local area around the base. It doesn't sound like
much, but this short sojourn into the Antarctic night was one
of very few opportunities for respite from the claustrophobia
of the base and everyone looked forward to it.
The tents were heavy double-lined pyramids of orange Ventile
that were luxuriously spacious inside. When a Tilley lamp was
lit within the tent, the light glowed through the fabric so that,
from outside, it looked like a bonfire.
During my final winter trip at Rothera a blizzard had raged
in the darkness of polar night outside the tent for nearly three
days without easing once. Outside, it was an apocalyptic fury
of wind and snow but inside, my holiday companion and I
were so well ensconced that the noise of the storm was muted
to nothing more than a dim rumble that was almost soothing
- a natural lullaby of moving air. We'd spent the time sleeping,
reading and eating meals imaginatively and elaborately created
from the basic dried supplies we had with us, helpless in the
ferocity of an Antarctic winter storm to do anything but wait.
There was only one reason to leave the warmth and comfort
of the tent.
Having put it off for hours, I wearily pulled on layers and a
headtorch before pushing myself through the narrow tubular
entrance of the tent into another world. In the dark I pushed
forward against the wind, away from the tent towards where
our snowmobiles would now be completely buried in drift
and snowfall. Behind me the tent glowed brightly through the