The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - 6
British woman becomes first
to ski alone across Antarctica
Italian Coast Guard scuba divers carry away the recovered bodies of two victims of the grounded cruise ship Costa Concor-
dia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, yesterday.
. .
To bdiles recovered
froI talian cruise ship e
10 days after the
accident 15 people
found, 17 remain
missing
ROME (AP) - Nudged gen-
tly by the tides off Tuscany, the
capsized Costa Concordia has
been deemed stable enough on
its rocky perch for salvagers to
begin pumping fuel oil from its
giant tanks as early as today.
The cruise liner, its hull
gashed by a reef and pocked by
holes blasted by divers searching
for the missing, yieldedtwo more
bodies yesterday, 10 days after
the accident. The corpses of two
women were found in the luxury
liner's Internet cafe, now 55 feet
(17 meters) underwater.
Tables, desks, elegant uphol-
stered armchairs and cabinets
bobbed in the sea as divers guid-
ed the furniture out of the holes
to clear space for their explora-
tion inside.
So far, the bodies of 15 people
have been found, most of them
in the submerged portion of the
vessel, while 17 others remain
unaccounted for. Authori-
ties said earlier reports that an
unregistered Hungarian woman
had called friends from the ship
before it flipped over turned out
to be groundless.
The Concordia rammed a reef
and capsized Jan. 13 off the tiny
Tuscan island of Giglio as it was
carrying 4,200 passengers and
crew on a Mediterranean cruise.
Salvage experts received the
green light yesterday to start
pumping fuel soon from the dou-
ble-lined tanks of the Concordia.
The weekslong fuel-removal
operation aims to avert a pos-
sible environmental catastrophe
in the waters off Giglio, part of
a protected seven-island marine
park.
Officials said the pumping
would be carried out as divers
continue the search for the miss-
ing since instrument readings
have determined the Concordia
was not at risk of sliding into
deeper waters and being swal-
lowed by the sea.
"The ship is stable," said Fran-
co Gabrielli, head of the national
civil protection agency. "There
is no problem or danger that it is
about to drop onto much lower
seabed."
Meanwhile, an oily film was
spotted about 300 yards (meters)
from the capsized vessel by offi-
cials flying in a helicopter and
by residents of Giglio, Gabrielli's
office said. Samples were being
analyzed, but preliminary obser-
vations indicated the slick is a
light oil and not from heavy fuel
inside the Concordia's tanks.
Absorbent panels put around
the area seemto have at least par-
tially absorbed the oil, authori-
ties said.
The ship's Italian captain,
Francesco Schettino, is under
house arrest near Naples, fac-
ing possible charges of man-
slaughter, causing a shipwreck
and abandoning his vessel while
some people were still aboard.
He has insisted that he was coor-
dinating rescue operations from
a lifeboat and then from shore.
The ship's operator, Costa
Crociere SpA, has distanced
itself from the captain, contend-
ing he made an unauthorized
detour from the ship's autho-
rized route. Schettino, however,
has reportedly told investigators
that Costa officials requested
that he sail close to Giglio in a
publicity move.
In a statement issued late
Monday, Costa said it would
refund passengers the full cost
Aston traveled
1,084 miles since
November
BUENOS AIRES (AP) - Brit-
ish adventurer Felicity Aston
became the first woman to ski
alone across Antarctica yester-
day, haulingtwo sledges around
crevasses and over mountains
into endless headwinds, past the
South Pole and onward to the
coastal ice shelf, persevering for
59 days in near-total solitude.
She made it to her destina-
tion ahead of schedule, using
nothing but her own strength to
cover 1,084 miles (1,744 kilome-
ters) from her starting point on
the Leverett Glacier on Nov. 25
to Hercules Inlet.
The most surprising thing
about her journey, she said,
was how emotional it proved
to be, from the moment she
was dropped off alone, through
every victory and defeat along
the way.
"I'm not a particularly weepy
person, and yet anyone who
has been following my tweets
can see me bursting into tears,"
she said in an interview with
The Associated Press yesterday
while waiting for a plane to pick
her up.
"When I saw the coastal
mountains that marked my end
point for the first time, I liter-
ally just stopped in my tracks
and bawled my eyes out," she
added. "All these days I thought
there was no chance I was going
to make it in time to make that
last flight off Antarctica, and
yet here I am with three days to
spare."
Aston also set another record:
the first human to ski solo, across
Antarctica, using only her own
muscles. A male-female team
earlier skied across Antarctica
without kites or machines, but
Aston is the first to do this alone.
Aston, 34, grew up in Kent,
England, and studied physics
and meteorology. A veteran of
expeditions in subzero environ-
ments, she worked for the Brit-
ish weather service at a base in
Antarctica and has led teams
on ski trips in the Antarctic, the
Arctic and Greenland.
But this was the first time
she traveled so far, so alone,
and she said the solitude posed
her biggest challenge. In such
an extreme environment, the
smallest mistakes can prove
treacherous. Alone with one's
thoughts, the mind can play
tricks. Polar adventurers usual-
ly take care to watch their team-
mates for signs of hypothermia,
which is easier to diagnose in
others than yourself, she said.
She thought she was done
for when her two butane light-
ers failed high in the Transant-
arctic Mountains, where it got
"really very cold."
"Suddenly I realized that
without a lighter working, I
can't light my stove, I can't
melt snow to make water, and I
won't have any water to drink,
and that becomes a very serious
problem," she said. "It's quite
stressful. It was just a matter of
every single day, looking at my
kit, and thinking what could go
wronghere and what canIdo to
prevent it?"
She did have a small box of
safety matches, and counted
and re-counted every one until
the lighters started working
again at lower altitude, she said.
This Antarctic summer has
seen the centennial of Roald
Amundsen's conquest of the
South Pole, where Britons still
lament that R.F. Scott's team
arrived for England days later,
demoralized to see Norway's
flag. Scott and his entire team
then died on their way out, and
some of their bodies weren't
found for eight months.
Aston had modern technol-
ogy in her favor: She kept fam-
ily and supporters updated
and received their responses
via Twitter and Facebook, and
broadcast daily phone reports
online. She carried two satellite
phones to communicate with a
support team, and a GPS device
that reported her location
throughout. She also had two
supply drops - one at the pole
and one part way to her finish
line - so that she could travel *
with a lighter load. Otherwise,
her feat was unassisted.
While others have trav-
eled farther using kites, sails,
machinery or dogs (now banned
for fear of infecting wildlife
with canine diseases), she did it
on her own strength.
Aston, whose journey also
helped raise money for monu-
ments to the 29 Britons killed
on Antarctica since Scott, had to
fight near-constant headwinds
across the vast central plateau
to the pole. Then she turned
toward Hercules Inlet, push-
ing through thick, fresh snow,
until she reached her goal on the
Ronne Ice Shelf, a spot within
a small plane's reach of a base
camp on Union Glacier where
the Antarctic Logistics and
Expeditions company provides
logistical support to each sum-
mer's expeditions.
With skies clearing yesterday,
Aston tweeted that she's been
promised red wine and a hot
shower after she gets picked up.
"A very long, very hot shower,"
she emphasized. "It's something
I haven't had in quite a longtime
now!"
From there, she'll join dozens
of other Antarctic adventur-
ers on the last flight out, a huge
Russian cargo plane that will
take her to Chile. Then she will
fly home next week to Kent, in
southeast England.
There, after two months of
little but freeze-dried food, she
can look forward to chicken pie,
her mother said.
"I think there will be lots of
cuddles, lots of hugs, it will be
quite emotional," said Jackie
Aston, 61.
Felicity Aston, pondering her
last hours of solitude yesterday,
told the AP she felt both joy and
overwhelming sadness at finish-
ing.
RELEASE DATE- Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS
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Office"
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enoughf"
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skull-and-
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waming
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ball
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magazine details
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underwater
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38 Dadaist Jean 52 Floored with a
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41 Orangutan or 55 Depression era
chimp pres.
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sphere gem
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shingles 60 _ earlier time
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kicks 65 River blocker
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