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expect to ski across such vastness. I couldn't help laughing
at my own naivety but I was struck by the sheer enormity of
the distance I was taking on. One thousand seven hundred
kilometres sounded like a lot on paper but now that I was
seeing it for real, every inch, I was left in no doubt. It was
a very long way by plane; it was an inconceivable distance
by foot. I became aware of a growing reverberation deep in
my belly but I couldn't tell if it was simply the tremor of the
plane's engines. There were nerves but there was also - at last
- a welling excitement. I could feel the freedom of striking
out across those drifts, imagine the searing cold that would
make me feel ecstatically alive and sense the satisfaction of
marching towards an empty horizon.
The small plane had set off with full tanks, but still had to
stop not once but twice to refuel in order to reach the far side
of the continent. The second stop was high on the Antarctic
plateau quite a way to the west of the route I would be taking.
I climbed out of the back of the plane to stretch my legs while
the pilots pumped sharp-smelling aviation fuel direct from
squat black oil drums propped upright in the snow. The wind
sent long streams of drift skidding along the ground toward
the horizon as if all the loose material in Antarctica was being
sucked northwards. It was far colder than it had been at Union
Glacier because we were much higher. I squinted into the wind
until my cheeks went numb, then turned and scanned the view
in the opposite direction. The sky was choked with broad
brushstrokes of cloud that flattened the light. Each layer had its
own subtly different shade, giving the overall effect of gleaming
like mother-of-pearl. Distracted by the sky, I almost missed a
dark shadow resting on the horizon, an irregular pyramid of
hazy grey, and then a whole chain of them stretching right
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