Alone in Antarctica

The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice

A memoir of a challenging adventure that “pulls us in and makes us feel as though we are with her, at the freezing-cold bottom of the world” (Booklist).

In the whirling noise of our technological age, we are seemingly never alone, never away from the barrage of electronic data and information. But Felicity Aston, physicist and meteorologist, took two months off from all human contact as she became the first woman—and only the third person in history—to ski across the entire continent of Antarctica alone. She did it, too, with the simple apparatus of cross-country, without the aids used by her predecessors, Norwegian men who employed either parasails or kites.

Aston’s journey required extremes of mental and physical bravery as she faced the risks of unseen cracks buried in the snow so large they might engulf her, and hypothermia due to brutalizing weather. She had to deal, too, with her emotional vulnerability in face of the constant bombardment of hallucinations brought on by the vast sea of whiteness, the lack of stimulation to her senses as she faced what is tantamount to a form of solitary confinement.

This is the inspirational saga of one woman’s battle through fear and loneliness as she honestly confronts both the physical challenges of her adventure and her own human vulnerabilities.
“Brings to life the terror, the wonder, and the craziness of her two-month ordeal.” —National Geographic