On January 23, 2012, Felicity Aston made history as the first woman to ski solo across Antarctica. Her remarkable journey and extensive career as a Polar Explorer and Climate Researcher have taken her to some of the most remote and challenging environments on Earth.
On January 23, 2012, Felicity Aston made history as the first woman to ski solo across Antarctica. Her remarkable journey and extensive career as a Polar Explorer and Climate Researcher have taken her to some of the most remote and challenging environments on Earth.
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Felicity Aston:
Antarctica is one of the most spellbindingly beautiful places that you'll ever have the good fortune to see. People think of it as being this sort of desolate white place, but it's a place of light and of color because you have a light being reflected in every tiny crystal of snow and ice that there is.
Shelby Stanger:
On January 23rd, 2012, Felicity Aston became the first woman to ski solo across Antarctica, earning her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Over the course of her career, Felicity's work as a Polar Explorer and Climate Researcher has taken her to some of the most remote parts of the earth. She led the first British woman's crossing of Greenland and has guided multiple record-setting ski expeditions on both the North and South Poles. For Felicity, ice and snow make an adventure even more exciting. Plus, she enjoys not having to deal with bugs or humidity. Felicity loves the cold, which is partly why she's chosen to create a wild life and live on a remote island off the coast of Iceland.
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard. Felicity Aston, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. So excited to have you on. Before we start, I'm just curious where in the world you are right now?
Felicity Aston:
I live right up in the northwest of Iceland, but I actually live on a small island just off the coast of Iceland, and it's only me and my family that live there. And so in the winter that becomes a bit problematic because the seas are quite big. So because my little boy who's seven, he goes to school and it got a bit much trying to bring him across the sea every day for school. So from about now until maybe end of January, we live in the nearest town to us, which is called Isafjordur, and it's right up in the northwest of Iceland.
Shelby Stanger:
I think that sets the tone for who you are as a human. So you live on an island in Iceland by yourselves. That is the dream for many people and also maybe very scary for many people. How did that happen? How big is this island?
Felicity Aston:
Tiny. It's two kilometers long and half a kilometer wide, and it's whatever if that in a lot of places. And so right now we're having lots of extreme weather, which is becoming more and more frequent, more a common occurrence, and so it's slowly being washed away. We're losing bits of it, it seems like every week at the minute. So it's getting smaller all the time. And yeah, I mean, it's our idea of heaven, we love it. But often people arrive and they just don't get it. And to be really honest, I have moments where I ask myself the same question, say, "What on earth have we done?"
Shelby Stanger:
Did you just see my mouth, that is just pretty much dropped the whole time I'm talking to you. This is fascinating. I've always, I think everybody listening here has dreamed about living on an island away from everybody. It's something, I struggle with wanting to be in the middle of a city that's near a beach and also living on a remote island or in the mountains. It sounds pretty magical there.
Felicity Aston:
Iceland is a really place on the margins, and you really feel that here. This is not only doing real hardcore adventure, but this is bringing along your family. This is making it part of just your normal existence and not thinking it anything special. And I guess that's what led me to believe that I could make a home and a life here.
Shelby Stanger:
When her family is living on their island, Felicity and her husband have to travel by boat to go grocery shopping, which they try to do as infrequently as possible. When they do grocery shop, they stock up. She says they buy 10 and a half gallons of milk at a time. It's been a steep learning curve to figure out how to build a life in such a remote place, but Felicity has always been fascinated by unknown territory. Growing up in an urban part of England, she became a Girl Guide, which is similar to being a Girl Scout here in the US. In college, Felicity studied meteorology and ended up joining a youth expedition to Greenland. On that trip, she realized that people could actually make a living doing outdoor expeditions. After graduation, Felicity landed a job in Antarctica, which jumpstarted her polar career.
Felicity Aston:
I think probably the thing that really set me off on this path in life was probably my first job after university, which was with the British Antarctic Survey, and that's the UK's main government funded research program in Antarctica. So they operate two continental research stations, and I was posted to the largest of the two as a meteorologist. And that was my first ever proper job at the age of 23. And back then, as this was in the year 2000 when I arrived, back then the standard contract, so what you signed up for was 39 months. So it was a big commitment to make at the age of 23 to stay in this tiny little research station cut off from the west of world for that length of time.
Shelby Stanger:
But then it's kind of the path for the rest of your life it sounds like that time?
Felicity Aston:
Yeah. I mean, now looking back on it, yes, I think it did. I mean, part of that is that it made me thoroughly unemployable. I mean, having that experience where you are your own boss and completely in control of your entire life, and yet in this kind of institutional bubble of a research station. So I mean, I remember when I first came back to the UK after that three-year period, feeling a sense of shock when I ran out of toothpaste, and it was like, oh, I can't just go to the cupboard at the end of the corridor and get more toothpaste. I need to actually go and find where they sell toothpaste and buy myself some new toothpaste. And it all came as a bit of a shock to have to deal with that day-to-day life again. But it also left me with this sense of I had this itch that I needed to go and scratch, and a normal nine-to-five job wasn't going to do that for me.
So that's what I mean by making me pretty unemployable. The idea that I would have to ask for permission to disappear off on a journey from an employer, I couldn't really fathom doing that.
Shelby Stanger:
During her time with the British Antarctic Survey, Felicity had gone on a handful of winter expeditions and learned how to stay safe in harsh conditions. This included carrying a lot of gear, like an extra tent, extra food rations, a massive first aid kit and bomb proof radios. The load was heavy, but it also allowed her to be prepared for all kinds of scenarios.
When her time in Antarctica was coming to a close, Felicity decided to head north to the Arctic. Once she got there, Felicity traveled with a group of British and Norwegian ex-special forces who taught her to move lighter and faster. As she started organizing her own expeditions, she found a balance of carrying only what she truly needed while remaining safe and being self-sufficient. After 10 years of refining her own style, Felicity embarked on her record-setting trip across Antarctica.
Felicity Aston:
After a while of putting together these expeditions that were continually getting bigger and more complicated and arguably more risky, I hit on the curiosity about, "Well, what would it be like to go by myself?" I'd read about peers as well as people in polar history who had gone alone and reading about their experiences. I started asking myself, "Well, how would I deal with that? Would I rise to the occasion in that way or would I be found wanting?" The other thing was I'd only done team expeditions before. And I was really keenly aware of how much I relied on being surrounded by other people as motivation, as a means to self-discipline. Particularly when you're in a leadership role, you don't have the option of going, "Oh, I'm not getting out my sleeping bag today, it is too hard." You have no option but to bring the best version of yourself.
So I wondered, okay, if it's just me and there's no one to see what you do, am I still the same person? Do I still follow the rules? Do I fall apart? Do I ... What happens? Those were all questions that I found fascinating to try and answer.
Shelby Stanger:
How long did it take for you to prepare for this expedition, and what did that look like?
Felicity Aston:
Well, you could argue that my entire expedition career up until that point had been preparing me for it. To put yourself out in that situation, you have to have the skills, the knowledge, and the confidence. Because if you put yourself out there and then you need help, you are asking others to put themselves at risk to get you out of that situation. So it took me a good decade or so of gaining experience before I felt that it was responsible to put myself out there. But the mechanics of the expedition itself came together pretty quickly, probably in about a year, and I think that was because I just completed a big expedition project and was already putting together another big expedition project.
So I had all the contacts in place, and my network was pretty cutting edge and up-to-date at that point. So I was able to take advantage of opportunities in terms of piggybacking my logistics on what else was going on and things like that. So if I was to set out to plan the same journey now, it would take me a lot longer. But yeah, that one took a year.
Shelby Stanger:
Incredible. It took you 59 days?
Felicity Aston:
Of skiing, yeah. So I was out there about 64 days on my own because it took a bit of a while to get going, and then I had a bit of a wait at the end before they came to pick me up. But yeah, I mean, I did see people during that time, so I passed through, I started on the Ross Sea side of Antarctica and then climbed up through the Transantarctic Mountains to the South Pole, which sits more or less sort of at the center of the continent.
And that's a full-on research station there. So there's a massive two-story building on stilts, and there's a very active skiway, so most days they'll have a plane coming in, so it's a really busy, active place. So I knew I was going to see people at the Pole. And it was interesting about the psychological impact of that because you're out there on your own and you create this kind of fragile psychological bubble where you are managing, it is like a coping strategy. And then suddenly you know that there's people out there, and that changes the whole mental dynamic because now you know that should the worst happen, there are people not a million miles away that would come and help you for sure. And it just instantly changes everything.
But of course, me, I was only halfway through my journey if that, I think it was about a third of the way in terms of miles and kilometers. So now I had to sort of let go of that safety and put myself back out in what I knew to be a very mentally challenging space, frightening space. And that was perhaps one of the hardest aspects of the whole journey, was having that shift from a place of vulnerability to a place of safety to then put yourself back into a place of vulnerability immediately afterwards.
Shelby Stanger:
Once Polar Explorer, Felicity Aston decided to cross Antarctica on her own, she had a lot of work in preparation to do. She knew all about route planning and gear prep from her previous polar expeditions, but Felicity also needed to raise enough funds to pay for her travel and food. There are significant costs that are unique to traveling to this part of the world, like plane fuel and infrastructure fees. Luckily, Felicity was able to secure a few commercial sponsorships. On November 25th, 2011, she was dropped off on the Ross Ice Shelf on the Antarctic coast.
Okay, so helicopter drops you off and then it flies away. What was that like, like when you saw the helicopter just, "See ya," just you?
Felicity Aston:
Yeah, I mean the shock of the isolation, and it was a shock. It sort of manifested itself physically, I started shaking and trembling, and it changed everything. It changed my thought processes, it changed the way I made decisions, it changed my priorities. But I think the root of it, the root of that fear was the fact that it was abundantly clear that I was completely responsible for my own wellbeing. And that's a pretty rare thing in life. Most of our lives, for the vast majority of the time, we are surrounded by help. And to suddenly realize that even in a life and death situation, to get a plane back to where I was, was going to take a lot of organization, that would take maybe a day or two, maybe a week, to think of a week is not far-fetched.
And I think that was the frightening thing, was being totally responsible. It was that real sense of you've got yourself into this, and now the only person that is going to get you out of it safely is you, so you better be up to it. And that was frightening because I didn't know if I was up to it.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow, it's so fascinating. Okay, so walk me through a day in the life from sun up to sun down. What is your day like?
Felicity Aston:
It's really easy to recount it because I relied heavily on routine. Everything down to the minutest action was embedded in a routine that did not waver. I mean, that was deliberate. Because if you're following a routine, your body's just going through the mechanics and doesn't have to engage the brain. As soon as the brain is engaged, emotion is engaged, and that makes everything so difficult.
So for example, if you are going for a run in the morning and you're putting your trainers on and you can hear outside, there's rain and gale, and it's dark and it's frosty. If you allow your brain to engage and you think about what it's going to feel like to be out there, how miserable you're going to be, how slippery and treacherous it might be underfoot, if you start having an emotional response to all of that stuff, there's no way you're going to leave your front door. But if you have a routine where you're pulling on your trainers, putting on your windbreaker, filling up your water bottle and switching on your head torch and heading out, your body just goes through those motions, and then before your brain's engaged, you're already out there running and you won't go back.
So if I engaged my brain, I wouldn't have left the tent. So I had to have routines that were just mechanically carrying me through that getting out of the tent. Because that was the hardest thing, was just getting myself going in the morning. And so my routine was I did exactly the same thing in exactly the same order and exactly the same way every single morning.
Shelby Stanger:
Did you bring any comfort foods with you?
Felicity Aston:
Well, I mean, I didn't allow myself any luxuries. Wait, you have to pull everything that you have with you and you have to tow it in a sledge behind you. So my sledge, my combined sledge weight. I mean, I had two resupplies along the way, but when I set out my combined sledge weight was 85 kilos, which is nothing. I mean, that is significantly below a lot of other start weights. And the reason it was so low is because I worked hard at minimizing everything and making some real tough, but calculated decisions about not taking spares, not taking duplicates of things, not taking tools, not taking luxuries. But the one thing that I did allow myself-
Shelby Stanger:
That's almost 200 pounds, just for our listeners that don't do kilos.
Felicity Aston:
Oh yeah, sorry.
Shelby Stanger:
187 pounds, it's amazing.
Felicity Aston:
But one of the luxuries I did allow myself was a large tub of peanut butter. And at the end of each day when I was sitting waiting for the snow to melt to make my water that I would drink and use to make my food in the evenings, I would put a spoon into this tub of peanut butter. And of course, it was frozen solid, so I would scoop it out like ice cream. It would always be a little bit soft because it had so much fat in it, I don't think it could completely freeze. But I would eat the spoonful of peanut butter like it was ice cream. And that was my one, for the minute or so that that experience lasted I really eked out, that was my pressure valve for the day was having that spoon of peanut butter. So peanut butter holds a special place in my heart.
Shelby Stanger:
I do a spoon full of peanut butter sometimes just before I go to bed, and I did not do any activity during the day, but it is a pretty delightful food. What about gear? Was there a piece of gear that you just especially will never not take with you on an expedition?
Felicity Aston:
Yeah. I mean, every element of that setup that I took on that trip was something that I had tried and tested on every other expedition and would never have gone without. So I mean, I always use Hilleberg tents because they are home and I couldn't imagine going on an expedition without them. And then there's a particular type of MSR stove that I always use. It's the sound of it, brings you ... There's two sounds in the world that I think are just so comforting and reassuring. One is the sound of that particular stove going on, it roars like a rocket engine and you know you are going to be warm, hot and fed within seconds. It's that kind of, and it elicits an emotional response. And the other sound is the noise of an ATM machine counting out cash. I think those two noises are two of the best noises in the whole entire world.
But then things like my down booties, I've got these wonderful down booties that I put on my feet, and we used to call them happy boots or happy socks because you just know you're going to have warm feet within minutes. And then I always take a big tub of moisturizer. And how many teams of guys have I been out with where they tease me rotten about, "Oh yeah, moisturizer." But at the end of the expedition when their faces are looking like they've been dipped in acid, they've got all sorts of cold injuries, peeling skin, all the rest of it, and then they go, "Oh, how come you're looking so fresh?" And it's like, "Well, maybe it's got something to do with that moisturizer you refused to put on." But Antarctica is such a dry place that you cannot operate if you haven't got some moisturizer.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm really curious about what it looked like. I know there's not much to, it's a lot of the same, but it's also got to be pretty beautiful. Talk to me about that.
Felicity Aston:
So often when I'm invited to go and recount experiences to people, there is an expectation. People want to hear about the misery, they want to hear about the injury, and Antarctica is one of the most spellbindingly beautiful places that you'll ever have the good fortune to see. People think of it as being this sort of desolate white place, but it's a place of light and of color because you have a light being reflected in every tiny crystal of snow and ice that there is in a place that's twice the size of the continent of Australia.
And it's split into all its different colors all the time. So whether that is witnessing sort of sparkle on the snow, and one of my favorite things is something called diamond dust. And this is where tiny amounts of moisture, pinpricks of moisture are freezing in the air because it's so cold, but they're not big enough to fall under their own gravity. So they just hang suspended in the air. And it's like the world has been scattered with fairy dust, but you can't look at it directly, you can only sort of catch it in the periphery of your vision. So as you're looking, you can just see the edges of your vision are just sparkling, like fairy dust. It's all very magical.
And then the optical effects that you see, I mean the sky is completely unobscured by buildings and trees. So it is literally half of your world that is 180 degrees of everything that you see. And so you get to see these amazing optical effects that fill the whole sky. And I remember when I was writing about these experiences afterwards, so I wrote a book about my journey alone across Antarctica, and I was writing about seeing, so the sun is surrounded by a circular rainbow called a halo. And then you get these sort of bright spots that are called parhelions, or more commonly sun dogs. But then you get sort of fake suns and upside down rainbows coming out on all the points of the compass of this central halo. So it can be hard to really convey how spiritual it feels to see something like that.
And I'm not particularly a religious person, but there was certainly a feeling of spirituality in a place like that because it just seems impossible that you are still on the same planet, that all of this is not orchestrated by some higher being that has impeccable taste, that can create these wonderful things that you really literally could not have imagined before you see them.
Shelby Stanger:
Though many moments were absolutely stunning, Felicity also dealt with massive obstacles like skiing through intense blizzards. There were times the snow was so intense and the whiteout so severe that she couldn't see, hear, smell, or taste anything. It was so disorienting that she felt nauseous. Even through exhaustion and loneliness, Felicity kept putting one foot in front of the other. After 1084 miles, she finally reached the other side of Antarctica on January 23rd, 2012, 59 days after she began her trek.
How did it feel on the 59th day? Well, it was like plus or minus when you actually got to the finish line?
Felicity Aston:
Yeah, I got there and I knew that I was there because my GPS was telling me that I was now on ice over water rather than ice over land. But I didn't stop immediately, I kept going because there was just this sense of momentum. It was like a big juggernaut that has to work its way down through the gears before it stops and will travel 10 miles in the process. I was a bit like that. I kept going for a good, I don't know, I don't know how long. Even after I knew that I could stop. And then I just sort of sat down on my sledge and there was a lot of relief of course, I was going through an area where there was a lot of crevasses, so now I didn't have to go anywhere, the plane would come to me.
So there was huge amounts of relief, but then also a lot of disbelief as what had just happened. And my brain couldn't really process all those experiences and that high level of alertness that I was in constantly trying to second-guess myself all the time, trying to predict what might go wrong in the next seconds and do something to prevent that happening. That high level of mental stress, it took a while for that just to wind down. But for the only point in my entire expedition, I pulled out my camera and I took a video rather than a photo. And I think it was because I realized that I was just too befuddled in that moment to express what it was, so I needed to film it. So I've got this wonderful sort of four-minute film of me talking into the camera at the moment that I stopped my journey and started processing the fact that I'd made it. And it's really difficult for me to watch because obviously I'm very emotional, but I think you can also just see the mental exhaustion and it's a difficult watch.
"So there it is, Hercules Inlet, the Ronne Ice Shelf, the opposite side of Antarctica to the Ross Ice Shelf where I started. I got here about 20 minutes ago, I've just been sitting here ever since. I don't really know what I was expecting. Don't really know what it all ... After counting the days and the miles for so long, it all seems to have come to an end of it quick. And now here I am. And of course I'm pleased to be here, but right now I just feel really shell shocked that it's over."
Shelby Stanger:
A lot of people do these wild ideas and then they're kind of a mess afterwards.
Felicity Aston:
Yeah. Well, I mean, I was very fortunate because the Antarctic season is a real hard close. The last planes leave and they have to leave because the winter storms start coming, and they cannot risk getting trapped in Antarctica because they would not survive a winter. So they need to leave. And it was only because the person who was running the logistics of that was someone who knew me very well and had a high level of confidence in me. So he enabled me to stay out there long enough to finish that journey, and I'm endlessly grateful to him. Can you imagine how that would feel to be so close and then have a plane come to pick you up because they're nervous that you won't make the last flight out?
So I was able to finish about two days before that last flight out of Antarctica. It was really, really close call. So as soon as I finished, I knew they wanted to hear from me as soon as possible because they were itching to come and get me. So I made the phone call and I said, "I'm here." And they're like, "Right. Pitch your tent. Give us a call back in an hour to give us some weather and we'll send the plane out to you." And my friend who answered that call, he said, "Oh, and Felicity, I've got a box of red wine here with your name on it. So within two hours you'll be here with me, safe and sound in the warm, drinking this box of red wine together." So I was like, oh. So then my whole mental fortification against all those sorts, all those feelings started to crumble a bit.
And I remember I put up my tent and I ate every last scrap of food I had, even fishing around in my pockets to find a peanut that might've escaped. I just ate and drank absolutely everything that I had and licked the packets and all that. And then an hour is up, so I rang back the base camp to give them weather, and my friend answered and he went, "Felicity, I'm so sorry." And you could tell from his voice, he was mortified. He said, "A weather system's come in out of nowhere, totally unexpected, and we can't fly. We can't come and get you, and it's going to be at least 24 hours until we can think about coming to get you."
And my first thought was, oh no, I've eaten everything. Nothing left to eat or drink. But my second thought was just, I've let my defenses down. I'm already in my head. I'm already back in the base camp. I'm already safe. And the thought of spending another night alone having to look after myself, I mean it nearly broke me. But actually in retrospect, what happened was that last 24 hours or so that I had on my own, just me and Antarctica was such an essential decompression. I think if I had have been picked up and taken straight to that base camp, there just wouldn't have been time for me to process what was going on. And I think that would've been a much worse situation. It just gave me time to just sit and take it in and prepare myself for reintroduction into society.
So in retrospect, I'm very grateful for that. But the plane did come and get me eventually. And the first thing, the doors opened and the first thing that came out of the plane was an arm carrying a box of red wine that literally had Felicity written on it in black marker pen. So I did eventually get the box of red wine just a little later than planned.
Shelby Stanger:
What are some of the things that you feel like and you changed after, there was Felicity before and Felicity after this expedition?
Felicity Aston:
Yeah. I mean, a couple of things. I mean, the thing I found most interesting was that I went to Antarctica believing that I was intrinsically me, that I was a set collection of values and beliefs and skills, and almost like a sort of cardboard cutout. This is me, and that won't change easy. I might get a different perspective or a different opinion, but essentially there is a core that is intrinsically me. But spending that time on my own made me realize how much we are shaped by the people and the influences around us. I see myself more rather than a cardboard cutout. I see myself as the space between the cardboard cutouts of those I choose to surround myself with. I'm filling all the gaps. And I've realized that that means I need to be more careful about who I allow to have that level of influence over me. And that ranges from people I work with or friends and family. But also, for example, just having the news on in the background and who's speaking, whose opinion am I listening to?
I used to think that all that stuff doesn't impact me terribly. And I've realized, actually, I'm not impervious to this. I think it actually affects us all much more than we care to realize. And so I've been a lot more careful about what I listen to, what opinions I allow to flow into my headspace. I'm much more careful about the influences around me because I realize now that we're not a cardboard cutout intrinsic set of values and beliefs and opinions that we're in a constant state of flux. And it can be changed quite easily.
But I think the other big thing that I learned was, and this is, I talk about this a lot. I'm very fortunate, I get asked to speak to a whole different range of audiences. And I often talk about that trying to get out of the tent each morning and being a sort of person when I arrived in Antarctica to do that expedition that if I had 10 things to do in a day and I'd completed eight by the end of it, I would beat myself up about, "Oh God, why haven't I done those other two?" I'm always focusing on what I failed to do and haven't taken enough time to appreciate the progress that I had made. And I don't think I'm alone in that. I see people I care about, they don't appreciate how much they're dealing with on a daily basis and giving themselves proper credit for the fact that they're keeping everything going despite all the rest of it happening.
So I return of promising to myself to remember that the amount of progress that you make in a day is not as important as the fact that you've made some progress in that day and that you should take time to celebrate the fact that you've made that progress. And so I summed it up to a little motto to myself I've been sharing with everyone that cares to listen ever since. So here you go. In case this is useful to any of you out there, my motto that I keep saying to myself is to just keep getting out of the tent. And by what I mean by that is that if you just get out there and do something each day, no matter how small, if you get out there, it's worth celebrating that because eventually you get out of your tent and see your ski track stretching right the way across Antarctica or whatever your metaphorical Antarctica might be. Eventually, you surprise yourself with just how far you've come.
Shelby Stanger:
If you want to learn more about Felicity and her journey across Antarctica, you can get her book "Alone in Antarctica," wherever you buy books. Felicity also has several more recent books about her other expeditions and experiences as a Polar Explorer. You can find those on her website at felicityaston.co.uk. That's F-E-L-I-C-I-T-Y-A-S-T-O-N.co.uk.
If you like this episode, you'll also enjoy our interview with Explorer Anne Bancroft, who is the first known woman to cross the North Pole. We'll link to it in the show notes. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listened. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.