Skiing in the Dark - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 194

Christmas-flake on my skin and when I looked up I noticed that
the sky was blue overhead even though the snow fell thickly
from it. The moment felt as miraculous as it was intimidating.
I tried to force my sluggish brain to remember every detail as
I skied away because I was sure it was a memory I wanted to
keep; an illustration of the dual nature of this most contrary
of continents.
The Christmas snow was a moment of calm in what was
becoming a tightly anxious day. I was approaching a known
area of crevasses unnervingly marked on my map and in my
GPS with a stylised symbol of a skull and crossbones. The
information had been passed on by Steve at ALE who had
collected reported sightings from previous expeditions. Each
expedition had come across only one or two crevasses but
together the sightings formed a tight cluster. I couldn't bank
on the accuracy of the plots on my GPS and neither was there
any way of knowing how extensive the crevassed area might
be. With this in mind I had been deliberately veering my course
eastwards over the previous few days as a precaution to avoid
the area completely. I didn't want to risk coming across any
outlying crevasses. Even so, the proximity of the skull and
crossbones made me uneasy. In the overcast weather and the
heavy spindrift it was hard to spot any strange formations on
the surface even though I scrutinised the ground minutely as I
skied, avoiding anything that looked suspiciously geometrical
or linear.
Then I stopped in surprise.
Quite suddenly, no more than a few inches from my right ski,
I noticed clear vehicle tracks. I looked again, more carefully.
Patterns of wind erosion in the snow had the habit of taking on
familiar forms and in the past weeks I had repeatedly thought I