In Polar Exposure: An All-Women’s Expedition to the North Pole (Imagine, Nov.), Aston recounts the arctic trek she led in 2018.
The book contains the perspectives of the women on the expedition, with you providing the narrative glue. How did you get the idea for that?
The expedition was a collective from the start. I was their leader, but I wouldn’t be writing the story for them. During the trip, some of the women kept video diaries, and others made notes or left voicemails to help them remember. It took endless hours of going through all the narratives and picking out the vital bits and shaping them into a chronology that worked. I wrote my own narrative, and I added the necessary background, the not-so-thrilling parts—the details I thrive on!
Was there ever a point when the mission seemed doomed?
It was before we ever got on the ice. We were in Longyearbyen, a Norwegian settlement on the island Spitsbergen, to get the plane out to the ice. There was delay after delay. At one point, we were told the expedition was canceled. We ended up waiting two weeks—that’s a long time. All of our insecurities and anxieties started to really surface. But once we got out on the ice, things were okay. On the ice, you focus, and the world shrinks down to basics needs and survival.
Besides reaching the North Pole, what were the other goals of the expedition?
We had an ambitious science program and were gathering data on physiological stress and psychological impacts in extreme environments. There’s no data for that on women. It’s all from Caucasian males. We were completely wired up—monitors on our wrists, around our middles, on the back of our arms. We had to give saliva samples at different times of the day and do tasks—for example, filming ourselves counting backward—to test our mental awareness.
Your career has gone full circle, from climate scientist to explorer and back to science. What has that been like?
It’s been a progression. I started spending time in the arctic circle and was asked to take samples of sea ice. It was really striking how little data we have. I was aware as a scientist that the computer models are only as good as the data we put in. But from the expedition side, I know how hard it is to get the samples. Since our 2018 expedition, there have not been any others to North Pole, because of Covid, but also because the risks now are so great. No country wants to be responsible for sending out a team when things can easily go so wrong. The ice is getting less stable, and the window of opportunity smaller.
