Direct Talk

The Arctic and Antarctic are
two of the most hostile places on Earth.

Not only bitterly cold,

these polar regions are also
vast, empty and unpredictable.

One pioneering woman

has been leading record-setting
polar expeditions for almost twenty years.

Felicity Aston is a British explorer
and climate scientist.

She was the first woman
to ski across Antarctica solo.

Felicity is an advocate
for female adventurers

and has led the most
internationally diverse teams of women

to both the North and South Poles.

Photographer Forest Banks,
Courtesy of Felicity Aston

She continues to lead
scientifically significant polar expeditions.

Direct Talk caught up
with Felicity in London.

Women at the Extremes

The Arctic and the Antarctic,

lots of people just see them
as big cold white places

at either end of the planet
that are largely the same,

but they're totally different

to the extent that

I bet if you drop me blindfolded
in a cold place and said,

"Are you North or South?",

I think I'd have a
good chance of telling you,

you know,
just by the feel of it, the smell of it,

because the Arctic is full of life.
You're never far away from life.

But in the Antarctic,
it's the exact opposite.

It's almost a completely sterile place.

It's a place where even
bacteria has a hard time surviving.

When you're alone on the Antarctic Plateau,

you get a real sense of vastness.

You know this place,
you turn around 360 degrees,

there's nothing, just that flat
white line dividing snow from sky.

And yet at the same time, you're struck by
just how amazing that makes us.

You know, we're so tiny and insignificant,

and yet here we are in a place
we're not supposed to survive,

and not only are we surviving it,

but we're learning to understand it.

Felicity is passionate about
raising the status of women in exploration

because she believes
they are under-represented.

One of the most significant ways
she empowers women is

by leading all-female expedition teams.

While people are still
interested and surprised,

there is still a place for
putting together all-female expeditions

just to send that really positive message,

there are plenty of women
achieving incredible things in

all aspects of society and including
science, technology and polar exploration.

The common perception, I think, is still

that women are kind of
latecomers to exploration.

And yet, you can go back to the Vikings,
you can go back to Roman and Greek times

and there's incredible stories
of female leaders, female explorers.

And yet, you know,
we don't know those stories.

Felicity grew up in Kent in England

and studied meteorology at university.

I grew up in a part of the world,
south east of England,

that isn't at all polar - not very extreme.

I mean, it very rarely snowed

and when it did, that was amazingly exciting.
It was like magic.

We'd get days off school

and we'd get to go off and
do things that we didn't usually get to do

snowball fights, building snowmen,

so I wonder if there was some
kind of connection made between

the winter environment
and the idea of adventure

and excitement and something new.

At 23, Felicity joined
the British Antarctic Survey,

a government-funded research programme.

She made her first visit to Antarctica in 2000

to monitor the climate and ozone
at a remote research station.

It was pretty intimidating turning up there

because at the time, the standard length
that you were expected to stay

was two and a half years.

Whereas that might sound like
a prison sentence.

In fact, that is perhaps the key to my
ongoing fascination with the polar regions,

because I got to be there

on days when there was nowhere else
in the world I would rather have been.

But then I also got to see
the different faces of Antarctica,

you know in the dark of winter and
that held me in really good stead later on.

Courtesy of Felicity Aston

After returning home,

Felicity began to plan expeditions
to take her back to the Antarctic.

She rose to international prominence in 2012

when she became the first person
to ski solo across Antarctica

using only personal muscle power.

It was a journey of 1744 kilometres

that took 59 days.

She was the first woman ever
to cross the Antarctic land-mass alone.

I'd completed a lot of
team journeys at that stage,

and I was very conscious of

the amount of motivation and discipline
that I gained from that team around me.

And I thought, okay, well,
what if I took that away?

What if it's just me?

It's so funny how often

the worst of moments are also the best.

For example, I remember

skiing one day through a big blizzard,

you know it was a total whiteout -
loads of wind,

snow being blown around in the air
so I couldn't really see anything.

And there was half of my brain just terrified

and then there's another part of my brain

that's going, wow, look at this,
you're being an explorer in Antarctica.

Like, who gets an opportunity to do this?
This is amazing.

So and those two conversations are going on
in your brain at the one same moment.

You know,
a lot of the blizzards in Antarctica,

they're only surface disruption,

so you look directly up
and it's a perfect blue sky.

And I remember just looking up

and it was just a beautiful moment
in all this kind of chaos.

Courtesy of Felicity Aston

For two months,

Felicity was hundreds of miles
from any other human.

She experienced hallucinations,
due to the profound loneliness,

and developed different techniques
to cope with the isolation.

I mean, the first few seconds of being left
on my own, at the beginning of my journey,

I was instantly talking aloud to myself

like a running commentary on
whatever I was doing.

But within maybe a week or so
that had stopped,

and by the end of my journey,
not only was I not speaking aloud,

but I would go whole days,

and then at the end of the day,
I would think,

what have I thought about today?

But I think the biggest thing that helped me

was maintaining a sense of routine.

Like getting out of the tent in the morning,

I didn't want to get out of the tent.

And if I sat there in the tent thinking about
what it would feel like to be out there

sort of trapped inside a frozen face mask
in that cold,

ploughing into that headwind,

you know,
I would never have got out the tent,

but because I had a routine,
I do this, I do this,

I put on my boots,
I make myself coffee, I do this, I do that.

Before I knew it,
I was already outside of the tent

and my brain hadn't even really engaged,

so I hadn't allowed myself
to have that emotive response

and then emotive resistance

to what I was about to do

and that really helped.

Courtesy of Felicity Aston

As a team leader,

Felicity has increased
the diversity of polar explorers.

In 2009, she led a South Pole expedition
made up of women from six different countries

and, in 2018,

a North Pole expedition with 10 women
from 10 different nations.

Getting to the South Pole with
a team of women from all around the world,

all around the Commonwealth in 2009,

you know, those women
returned to their home countries

and shared their story
and they sent a really strong message

to so many people,
men and women, boys and girls, about,

you know, what it's possible to achieve,

but also a really positive message

about what women are achieving and
where women should be in society.

I still get emails today
from people that have said

they've read or heard something
about that story

and it's inspired them to take action
on long held ambitions.

Felicity's teams gather data on themselves –
scientific information

about humans on expedition has
previously been based on white men.

Back in 2018,

we undertook a whole raft of both
physiological and psychological studies

about the response of the human body
to extreme environments.

There's very little data
that has come from women,

practically no data that's come from
women of various ethnicities.

So our expedition was really important at

plugging some of that data gap

feeding into the global effort towards

human interplanetary,

maybe even interstellar travel in the future.

Courtesy of Felicity Aston

Felicity is at the forefront of
highlighting achievements of women

and finding different ways to
communicate the expedition experience.

I think the public perception is still that

the polar world is still
very much a male dominated arena.

And yet, if you look back at
the last few polar seasons,

there have been far more women going out
and doing solo expeditions and

I think that the perception
needs to catch up with the reality.

We tweeted all the way
to the South Pole on an expedition

and the immediacy of that was

really incredible to the people
that were following our expedition.

With another expedition,
we created an art exhibition

that travelled around the UK and to Iceland

and we recorded the sounds of a place

like, when you're walking
in really cold snow,

it sounds very different.

You can almost tell the temperature

just by the sound of your foot falls in snow.

Mathematics and science is just one language
we can use to describe and record a place.

We can have choreography,

we can have art,

we can have photography.

Composers have been to Antarctica
and created pieces of music

that future generations will listen to

and get a sense of place that
they wouldn't be able to get from,

you know, just a whole load
of scientific literature.

Courtesy of Felicity Aston

Between expeditions,

Felicity is working as a research scientist at
the National Oceanography Centre in the UK.

She is studying Arctic Ocean sea ice

in order to analyse the causes
and impacts of climate change.

I think the language you use has led to

some of the really deep fundamental
misunderstandings about climate.

You know, we can't combat climate change.

It is happening, and we've known that
it is happening for a very long time.

So now, in my mind, my opinion is

we have to focus on adapting
to what we know is coming.

Let's look at our food supplies.

Let's look at all of this

in terms of the climate future
that we know is on the horizon

and being realistic about what we need to do.

Felicity is now preparing
her next North Pole expedition.

Her team will gather important data

to understand environmental change
and predict future climate.

Courtesy of Felicity Aston

For decades, Arctic ice coverage
has been decreasing.

Felicity may be among the last people

who are able to stand
at the North Pole on frozen ocean.

The estimates in 2018

were that we'd already lost 85% of
that thicker, older, more stable ice.

And so what that means is that the coverage
of ice in the Arctic Ocean that we have today

is much more readily broken apart

and our opportunity to get out there

and understand that incredible environment
before it's gone,

that window is really short.

I think people like to think
of the polar regions as being

somewhere far away
that has nothing to do with them.

You know when you start to study
the planet and environmental systems,

it becomes really obvious very quickly
just how interconnected everything is.

What happens in the Arctic and the Antarctic

directly affects the weather
that you experience

when you walk out of your front door,

and, you know, the forecast for the future

as we start to see changes
in those polar environments,

that will start to change

not only the atmospheric circulation
that brings our weather,

but also the biodiversity
that we see around our coast,

the very fabric of life on the planet.

The war in Ukraine

and breakdown of diplomatic relations
between Europe and Russia

has directly impacted Arctic research.

The war delayed Felicity's
upcoming expedition by over a year.

It became obvious that we weren't going to
be able to continue with our plans

because most of the logistical support that
enables us to get up onto the Arctic Ocean

came out of northern Siberia

and a lot of the flight crews
and planes came out of Ukraine.

It makes it very apparent how invested Russia
is in particularly the Arctic region.

So for example,

Russia has by far
the largest icebreaker fleet

that's capable of accessing
high latitude Arctic Ocean sea ice.

And so the last year,

the operator that enables us to access
the North Pole for a ski expedition,

they've been working really hard,

kind of creating a
whole new logistical framework

that doesn't involve
going via Siberia or the Ukraine.

In 2023,

Felicity will lead the "Before It's Gone"
expedition to the North Pole –

a scientific exploration of Arctic ice.

She has selected an all-female team.

They will travel by ski,

pulling sledges containing all their food,
fuel and equipment.

Preparation is vital

to navigate on moving ice sheets,

avoid polar bears, and face the extreme cold.

When you first kind of get off the plane
or get off the helicopter

into -40 degrees centigrade,

the first intake of air, it kind of hits
the back of your throat and makes you cough

because it's, you know, dry and cold,

and that makes your eyes water,
which of course, then all freeze up,

and yeah, so you've got your eyelashes
all frozen together

because your eyes are watering

and you're coughing, you can't speak properly

because you're coughing
with every other breath.

And it's really intense.
There's a huge amount of pressure.

We've upped the stakes with our expedition

because we also need to
collect all this scientific data.

All of that takes time,
it has to be done properly.

I mean the greatest lesson that
I think I've learned is

the power of just
keep getting out of the tent,

not giving in.

You know no matter what
the problem you're facing,

If you're chip, chipping away at it,

you will eventually get there.

Keep getting out of that tent.

Keep getting out of the door every morning,

keep tackling that problem every single day.

Because if we stop doing that,
that's when we truly fail, right?

Keep getting out the tent.