Felicity Aston is a polar adventurer and climate scientist.
She is the first person to manually ski 1084 miles across Antarctica, coast to coast via the south pole, and she did it completely alone.
Who is Felicity Aston? She is a British meteorologist and adventurer (yes, that really is a job) After completing her Masters in Applied Meterology at Reading University she became the Senior Meteorologist at Rothera Research Station for British Antarctic Survey in 2000. She spent nearly three years on Antarctica studying ozone depletion and climate.
On the 24th November 2011, Felicity set off on an epic coast to coast journey, setting two records. That of being the first person to traverse Antarctica by muscle power alone. She didn't use any machines or kites. And also, she became the first woman to cross Antarctica completely alone. On the journey she had two supply drops, but did not have any other team members with her for the entire 59 days.
The journey was one of self exploration. She knew she didn't like being by herself, but she wanted to know how far she could push her self. She wanted to find that limit. The experience of being alone changed over the course of her expedition. From the panic attack she felt she had after the plane that dropped her off disappeared. When the realisation that the next human being was hundreds of miles away, that any help could be days away is not longer. That feeling of being alone was almost too much. But much later on, when she met some kite skiers, she didn't want to hang around, feeling as if they were almost encroaching on her expedition. The feeling of being along, devastating to begun with, became bearable towards the end.
Being alone for that length of time, in the featureless and white expanse of Antarctica sounds like a phycological nightmare to some people. Sensory deprivation can be a very big problem. The brain cannot cope well with no input, and since Antarctica is white, bleak and flat on top, there is little to no visual stimulation. When the weather closes in, it becomes worse. The ground is white, the air is white, the sky is white. Ice and snow formations on the ground disappear making skiing very difficult. Felicity had to endure frequent hallucinations. She described skiing for an entire day, smelling fish and chips non stop. Or the time she disturbed an angry dwarf. Her best friend became the sun. Greeting the sun every time she got out of her tent became a daily thing for her. As well as begging it to come back out if it was obscured by clouds or storm.
The biggest hurdle Felicity had to over come on the expedition was getting out of the tent each day. It became her motto. Just get out of the tent. She had people relying on her back home. Thousands of people following her progress on twitter. But more than that, her motivation for getting out of that tent was to prove wrong every person who had said she couldn't do it.
If you get the chance, I would really recommend her book, Alone in Antarctica which documents her trip.
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This was not the only trip to Antarctica that she has been a part of though. In 2009, she organised and lead the Kaspersky Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition. The expedition was to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Commonwealth, where 8 women from the commonwealth countries of Cyprus, Ghana, India, Singapore, Brunei, New Zealand, Jamaica and the UK would ski to the South Pole. It was an all women international team. Team members were picked from ordinary people. Nearly none of them had any prior experience skiing or being on an expedition. In fact, one had never seen snow before. But that was the point, every single person can do extra ordinary things if they really want too.
The trip had several firsts. The team members from Brunei and Cyprus were the first person from their nation to ski to the South Pole. Those from India, Singapore and New Zealand became the first women from their country to do so.
You can read about the highs and lows of the expedition in the book Call of the White: Taking the World to the South Pole. It goes into fantastic detail where the idea for the expedition came from, the problems organising such an expedition. Set backs with passports, visas and things you just would never have thought would be a problem. To the Louis Pootton bags.
