Felicity Aston

Felicity Aston trained as a meteorologist and took a job running the British Antarctic Survey's weather station at Halley Research Station, spending three years living through the Antarctic winters that most visitors never experience. The isolation and cold gave her a grounding in polar conditions that she later put toward organised expeditions rather than scientific postings alone.

In 2009 she led the Kaspersky Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition, a team of women from across the Commonwealth with little polar experience between them, on a ski crossing that required as much work training and preparing the team as skiing itself. The expedition succeeded, but Aston came away from it determined to test herself alone, without a team to manage or rely on.

In 2011 and 2012 she set out to ski solo across Antarctica using only her own strength, rejecting the kites that other solo polar travellers had used to let the wind pull them across the ice. Sixty days later, exhausted and having battled crevasse fields and long stretches of complete isolation, she completed the crossing, becoming the first person to cross the Antarctic landmass alone by muscle power alone. She has since written and spoken widely about the psychological toll of extreme solitude, describing the expedition's hardest moments as mental rather than physical.