Long anticipated Call Of The White

Call of the White
by Felicity Aston

If my expectations had been set correctly, I would have enjoyed this book more.  I'd put it on my must-read list last winter when I was following Felicity Aston's solo trip across Antarctica.  Traveling alone, her twitter feeds were all about "me, myself and Antarctica."  But this book is much different--it's the story of an earlier adventure where she led an eight woman skiing expedition to the South Pole.

After a short teaser involving a collapsed tent in a severe storm (note: wind gusts of 40 knots = 46 mph), she backtracks to the genesis of the expedition--the idea, the planning, and the choice of team members.  Half of the book is over before they set foot in Antarctica. It's all about funding, training, passports and personalities. Women from all over the world were interviewed--she ended up with team members from Brunei, Cyprus, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Jamaica, and the United Kingdom.

All of this is interesting stuff, but not what I'd expected.  Although I might have enjoyed a section of before-and-after observations from each member of the team.  Especially if it were told in their own words.
There's a lot of detail here; a lot of minor matters that, if unattended to, could become trip killers.  There's not much margin for error when you're outdoors in -20C. (-4F) Aside from the obvious--exhaustion; getting lost; snow blindness; freezing to death--there is overheating, perhaps the most dangerous of all.  Sweating in your long johns means damp skin and damp clothes.  Frostbite.  Hypothermia.  Death..

When the skis finally hit the ground, I was thrilled by an occasional passage like this:

It blew steadily against our backs, dragging loose snow across the surface in a continuous flow along the ground.  The surface wasn't smooth but had been worn by the wind into sastrugi, wave formations carved into the snow.  The sharp, clean lines of the ripples were as perfect as the petals of a flower.  They caught the sunlight, creating shade and texture so that the ground was flecked with pale pink and purple as well as flashes of pure white.

That's the way it goes on any trip, not to say that this just any trip by any stretch of the imagination.  A few moments of majesty, then back to wrestling with details.  And as leader of the expedition, Felicity Aston wrestled with a lot of details.  The failure of team members to follow orders had to be the worst.  I'm reading another book in which the main character's inability to follow orders should have gotten him killed multiple times already.  But that's a different story.

 Re , as a travel/adventure reader, I liked.  But maybe not loved.