LOO-JW - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 69

it was certainly not as significant to them in a truck as it was
to me on skis. If the next person to ski up the Leverett Glacier
asked my advice I would be able to warn them not to make the
same mistake.
I consoled myself with the realisation that 'not knowing' is
supposed to be part of the excitement of being first, the reward
of priority. When Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen searched
for a route through this very same chain of mountains a
century before they had even less information about what they
might find. Antarctica was still a place of fantastical possibility
and conjecture. At the time, the scientific expectation that they
would find an inland sea at the South Pole was so plausible that
they could have been forgiven for carrying boats with them.
Another, perhaps less revered theory, predicted that they would
find a gateway to the hollow centre of the Earth. From our
modern perspective of knowledge it is easy to forget what to
be 'unknown' truly means. As I skied away from the top of the
Leverett Glacier, petulantly reproaching myself for a decision
that was made for good reason but ultimately flawed, it was
perhaps the closest I would ever come to experiencing, in some
small way, a taste of the frustrations and dilemmas that those
early pioneers must have faced on a daily basis.
I managed another two miles before camping on the top of
an escarpment overlooking the gap in the mountains I had
climbed through. To cover only five nautical miles in a day
was demoralising but I had gained a lot of height. I seemed to
be level with the very tops of the mountains that had towered
over me just the day before. Still, the experience on the glacier
had left me shaken. Even though there was now only enough
wind to send long streams of snow drifting along the ground,
I spent much longer than necessary creating deep and secure