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 with the simple apparatus of cross-country, without the aids used by her prededecessors - two Norwegian men -- each of whom employed either parasails or kites. Aston's journey across the ice at the bottom of the world asked of her the extremes in terms of mental and physical bravery, as she faced the risks of hypothermia and unseen cracks buried in the snow so large they might engulf her. She had to deal with her emotional vulnerability in face of the constant bombardment of hallucinations, brought on by the vast sea of whiteness which caused the lack of stimulation to her senses, as she faced what is tantamount to a form of solitary confinement.
