LOO-JW - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 67

in my boots I had to lean heavily on my ski poles, their spikes
gaining a precarious purchase on the icy surface. I kept my
head bowed, watching my feet making tiny, jerky steps as if
climbing miniature stairs. The rhythm of step and ski pole as
I moved forward was remorseless - tap, tap, tap - refusing to
submit to my rasping breathing, the aches in my calves or the
dull throb of the sledge weight around my hips and lower back.
It was a mechanical effort and I felt strangely disembodied
from the process; I was being propelled by muscle and bone,
the fundamental engineering of my body, and it appeared to
have little to do with what thoughts passed through my brain.
All thinking seemed to stop, replaced with a dispassionate
register of pattern and tempo. When I did eventually look up
I could see the lip of the glacier above me still and snow being
flung from its summit like water frothing over a waterfall.
I felt my heartbeat quicken. This was undoubtedly the
steepest and windiest section. I pushed on before I had time
to be intimidated. I wondered how I would have felt if I had
continued the previous day and met this vortex. I concentrated
on the rhythm and thought about the words on the locket from
my sister, 'Every step'.
I quickly lost track of time, pushing on when I should have
paused for breaks, pulling against gust after gust, staggering
and slipping but refusing to allow myself to stop. I was so
utterly fixated on each step that I'm not sure when exactly
I first noticed the onslaught of waves begin to slow, or the
intensity of each gust diminishing. I just remember looking
up and finding myself in the centre of a flat bottomed bowl,
sheltered on all sides by gentle banks of snow. And I remember
the quiet. My ears rang with the absence of that roaring,
rushing wind.