Every Step - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 10

and partially concealed cracks of monstrous proportions.
The top of the glacier was known as the 'Devil's Dancefloor'
because of the sheer number and intricacy of crevasses. The
route looked highly complicated and very risky to travel
alone. Images of the Axel Heiberg filtered into my dreams,
filling them with lurid visions of a long, lonely death at the
bottom of a cold crevasse.
The Shackleton was little better. In an account of their
traverse of the glacier in 2000, Liv Arnesen and Ann Bancroft
describe a nightmare terrain of crevasses concealed by rotten
ice. Repeatedly they fell through the surface, usually getting
wedged thigh-deep but occasionally ending up dangling by
their elbows over cavernous spaces.
'We would later name this place Hell,' records Ann.
Liv had a particularly close escape, finding herself staring
down into a blue-black abyss, saved only by some webbing
around her wrist that had snagged on a lump of ice. It allowed
her just enough time to gain some purchase on the wall of the
crevasse and lift herself out.
'I still have nightmares about what happened on the
Shackleton Glacier,' she writes. 'To this day it remains one of
the most terrifying experiences I've had in all my travels.'
Reading their recollections left me feeling faintly nauseous.
I couldn't justify taking such a risk by myself. It seemed that
neither the Shackleton nor the Axel Heiberg was a viable
option and without a route through the Transantarctic
Mountains, my plans stalled - but the ambition continued to
stalk my daydreams.
Antarctica was never far from my mind, even as I turned my
attention to other commitments. I regularly give talks across
the UK and further afield in Europe and America, sharing