Solo ski: Weston native completes Antarctica expedition

When the snow of Antarctica settled under Monet Eliastam’s feet, there was a brief moment when she thought she had hit a crevasse and might plummet into a fracture in the ice.

But it was just the snow settling, a sensation she had read about in books about polar expeditions years before. She moved forward across the expanse and became the first American woman to ski across Antarctica solo. She was drawn to the expedition because she loves the feeling of surviving a challenge.

“I liked the idea of doing something where I was self-sufficient,” she said.

Eliastam, 36, who lived in Weston until she was 13, completed a 700-mile trek across Antarctica on Jan. 18. She spent 57 days crossing from the Ronne Ice Shelf in western Antarctica to the South Pole.

She credits her love of adventure to books, including “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” by Alfred Lansing and “Mawson’s Will” by Lennard Bickel. As a child, she spent hours at the Weston Public Library. As a student at Barnard College, she took a class on literature about polar expeditions.

Nina Wheeler, a childhood friend who grew up down the road on Rolling Lane, said that Eliastam had always been independent and unafraid to voice her opinion. That included Eliastam’s thoughts on skiing as a child.

“I tried to take her skiing when we were kids, but she hated it,” Wheeler said. “She’d take the skis off and walk down.”

Although skiing was a new skill for Eliastam, Wheeler was not surprised when her friend began training for Antarctica. She had seen Eliastam’s dedication from her earliest days. During their first playdate, the two raced down Wheeler’s driveway on their bicycles. Eliastam lost control and crashed into the house’s stairs. Wheeler’s mother watched in horror, but Eliastam was nonplussed. She jumped up and declared herself the winner.

“I would describe Monet as very independent. She is unafraid of saying what she wants and doing it,” Wheeler said. “Her interests always outweighed her fears.”

Eliastam’s first big adventure came in 2016, three years after graduating from college. The British Army had identified the potential site of her great-uncle’s plane on Mount Kenya, which had crashed during training in World War II. They were going to the location and needed permission from next of kin to bring back remains. Eliastam asked to go and the Army agreed.

During the trek, they bushwhacked down the second-tallest mountain on the African continent, got lost and ran out of food and water. Eliastam said it was far from a life-or-death experience, but that she wanted to replicate that feeling of making it through a challenge for the rest of her life.

“It was like ‘Indiana Jones,’ is how I thought of it at the time. I had never done anything like that before,” she said. “When you do make it out, that feeling of getting through something challenging is what I got addicted to.”

Since then, Eliastam has made a career of leading adventure tours around the world.

She was inspired to start training for her own Antarctic adventure after reading about Preet Chandi, who completed a solo expedition to the South Pole in 2022.

Eliastam learned to ski, trekking across Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago, and the ice caps of Greenland in the lead-up to the expedition.

She lugged car tires along beaches on the North Shore to prepare to haul her food and equipment to the South Pole.

“I’m a pretty regular person who took on a big goal,” Eliastam said.

The preparations were as much a mental feat as they were a physical one, Eliastam said. In the frozen desert of Antarctica, Eliastam’s fortitude was put to the test. Even as her pack lightened over the course of the trip, it still felt as heavy as it did in the early days. She faced whiteouts, where the snow and wind made it impossible to see.

In order to keep moving, she would have to take eight steps in one direction, check the compass strapped to her chest and adjust in the whiteness. Her mind would generate images of cartoon characters in the blank expanse. Sometimes it was Popeye; other times, the Super Mario Brothers.

“I think it was because my brain was working for visual stimuli; it started flashing in front of my eyes cartoon characters,” Eliastam said. “It was interesting but also a little bit annoying.”

Every day, she sent updates to her friends and family via satellite. She told them about the cold, how far she had traveled, the chafing. The stretch between days 20 and 30 was grueling, but her brother encouraged her to focus on her accomplishments in messages from home.

“My brother texted me that my updates were scaring mom, so I decided to focus on the positive things,” Eliastam said. “It helped me mentally too in a way I didn’t expect. I was doing it for my mom, but it helped me to focus on the positive, first, too.”

She bolstered her mood by listening to voice notes she recorded for herself throughout her training, cheering her future self on and congratulating her on the work she had done to get there. Lorde and Taylor Swift were also in heavy rotation.

After 57 days, Eliastam made it to the red-and-white pole topped with a metal globe at the Ceremonial South Pole. It was the days leading up to that moment that were the most exciting for her.

“I’m achieving a dream right now. That’s hard to do; that’s why there aren’t many people achieving it,” Eliastam remembered thinking. “I’m going to make it…that’s what people get addicted to, the feeling of achieving dreams.”