Meet Felicity...
British polar explorer Felicity Aston MBE is an author, speaker, expedition leader and former Antarctic scientist. In 2012 she became the first woman to ski alone across Antarctica. It was a journey of 1744km that took 59 days to complete and which gave her a place in the book of Guinness World Records.
“Resilient, brave, daring, foolhardy, admirable and hugely likeable”
“...truly, remarkable...”
Photo by Robert Hollingsworth
Felicity's Polar career began in the year 2000, when she travelled to Antarctica for the first time with the British Antarctic Survey as a Meteorologist. Aged just 23 she spent a continuous period of two and a half years (including two consecutive winters) at Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula to monitor climate and ozone.
Felicity went on to organise and lead numerous expeditions to remote places around the world, but particularly to the Polar Regions. Her expeditions have included the first British Women’s crossing of Greenland, a 6000km drive to the South Pole, a 36,000km drive to the Pole of Cold, and leading the largest and most international team of women ever to ski to the South Pole.
Felicity continues to explore, specialising in new and exciting ways to communicate the expedition experience to the wider world. Her Kaspersky Lab Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition was the first to ‘Tweet to the Pole’ and material from her recent Pole of Cold expedition has been developed into a travelling art exhibition. She has written three books (her first was a finalist in the Banff Mountain Festival Book Competition) and regularly produces articles for various publications in the UK and abroad including CNN, Geographical and The Huffington Post. In 2013 she spent a month flying across North America in an airship co-presenting a two part BBC Science documentary about the atmosphere called ‘Operation Cloud Lab: Secrets of the Skies’ for BBC Two.
When not on expedition, Felicity has worked closely with a number of expedition-related organisations, sitting on the Council of the Young Explorers Trust and of British Exploring (formerly British Schools Exploring Society) as well as acting as an ambassador for two inspiring charities, The British Antarctic Monument Trust and Equal Adventure.
Felicity has been elected Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society in London and The Explorers Club in New York. She is a 2008 Churchill Fellow and has received the Ginny Fiennes Award from the Transglobe Expedition Trust, and the 2014 Women of Discovery Award from WINGS WorldQuest. In 2015 she was awarded The Queen’s Polar Medal - one of very few women to have received this special honour – and was appointed MBE for services to polar exploration.
Felicity divides her time between her home in Reykjavik and her native UK.
“Wow!”
“My first ‘expedition’ involved being bribed up a modest peak in England at the age of nine by my parents with a packet of Opal Fruits (my favourite sweets at the time). The sense of achievement on reaching the top was slightly lost in the pouring rain but something about the experience must have stuck because I haven’t stopped since.”