Paying Attention - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 26

beside the plane. Having chosen to use smaller, plastic sledges
I found I couldn't fit the sheer volume of equipment I needed
into one alone. Instead I had two identical sledges connected
in series with a custom-made pivot. They looked more like a
child's toboggan than a serious bit of polar equipment - but
looks can be deceptive. I had used similar sledges on nearly
all my previous polar expeditions and found that as well as
being extremely tough, they had two other advantages over the
better looking fibreglass versions: they are lighter and much,
much cheaper.
The two pilots loaded the sledges and my skis into the back of
the plane. On top I piled the two separate bags I had prepared
as resupplies; one I would collect at the South Pole and the
second would be left on the ice at a place called Thiels Corner
about halfway between the Pole and the end of my journey.
After a few brief goodbyes, I climbed into my seat. It was
the only seat on the aircraft and it was right at the back, as far
from the pilots as it was possible to get. I felt faintly ridiculous
as I strapped myself in, as if I was at the end of a long tunnel,
or deliberately quarantined. The pilots twisted round in their
seats at the front to give me the thumbs-up before the engines
started. I stared out of the window as we jolted down the
skiway, watching Union Glacier shrink to become a series of
tiny dark blobs on the snow, before being engulfed completely
by the panorama that expanded as we gained height. From
above, the mountains looked like misshapen starfish partly
covered with fine white sand, ridges and arêtes splayed out
like short stubby tentacles.
The plane banked sharply and we headed south, flying
between the larger peaks. I struggled to pick out features of
the landscape that had been particularly striking from the