San Diegan Will Join All-Woman Trek Across Antarctica--in Winter : Expedition: Using only skis for travel, the team will slog 1,500 miles across the frozen wastes while braving the brutal cold.

You might think a person bored with her job might take a two-week vacation to Hawaii. But for San Diego resident Sunniva Sorby, her life’s work led her to challenges of adventure on the world’s driest, windiest and coldest continent, Antarctica.

Sorby is the fourth and newest member of an all-women’s team planning to spend the winter slogging 1,500 miles across ice and snow of the South Pole.

The trekkers’ only transportation will be the skis on their feet: no tractors, no dog sled. They will have to pull 180-pound sleds loaded with gear across chasms, endless snow-white plains and hardened waves of snow 8 feet high. Their inner strength may have to cross a more treacherous terrain, enduring thoughts that could freeze any spirit so isolated in the depths of an icy world. “The survival forces that surround you are against you” in the Antarctic, said Sorby during an interview at her home near Balboa Park before her departure Monday.

“When there is sunshine, you feel like embracing the warmth,” she said, opening her arms wide and glancing at the piles of paper and gear strewn about her apartment. She pulls her legs to the chair, hugging her sides.

“But, when you are out on the snow, the cold will make you want to . . . go into your own little world,” the 31-year-old Sorby said. “You have to fight not to shut down emotionally.”

One of the many people tapping into the expedition is a researcher who has studied the emotions of people in four previous polar expeditions, including one with Ann Bancroft, now the leader of Sorby’s expedition.

Dr. Gloria Leon, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Minnesota, says she is particularly interested in the group dynamics of the all-women team.

The all-male teams often have arguments and dissension, especially if there are co-leaders in the group, Leon said.

Teams with both men and women have often kindled the women’s resentment, she said, explaining that they perceived men as chauvinistic and put extra stress on themselves to pull more than their own weight.

With Sorby’s group, Leon predicts the women will work closely, without causing each other emotional stress. Leon explained that women characteristically communicate and share feelings with each other more than men.

Leon said NASA has shown interest in her research observing men-women group dynamics. The information can be applied when forming crews, including those consisting of men and women, for long-distance space travel, such as trips to Mars.

Comparing the rigors of Antarctica with another planet is more real than people may think.

Among the books Sorby is reading is one documenting the only other expedition that traveled the same route the women are taking. The place where Sorby’s group hopes to arrive by Christmas day is described in the book as “where the only direction is north, where the wind comes out of the north, where the centrifugal force of the Earth closes and the stars no longer rise and set.”

Sorby sits in her living room, lost in images of the future, and reads a quote from a Norwegian explorer, perhaps her favorite because Sorby was born in Norway. “We have the pole in sight, and I can hear the axis of the Earth squeaking.”

The reality of Sorby’s adventure has begun. Her gear is packed and shipped to the Minnesota base of American Women’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Sorby left Monday to meet her group and finish the last days of preparation. The group is scheduled to leave for Chile Monday, where they will wait for good weather to cross hazardous Drake’s Passage at tip of South America to their frozen goal.

The expedition’s clothing resembles marshmallow-style space suits, which can maintain warmth in temperatures plunging 70 degrees below zero. The inner ski-boots have seven layers of foam for warmth, and Sorby’s down night boots are the size of small tree trunks.

She has packed powdered toothpaste to conserve weight and two flags she bought at an Old Town shop: one California state flag, and one for Canada, her childhood home.

She has also packed coffee, what she calls her one vice in a life of no alcohol and no tobacco.

Sorby says she has the health and strength to qualify for the trip “indirectly,” because of her training over the years. She lifts weights and runs every day, and has run six marathons in her life. Because Sorby is replacing a team member who developed an ulcer and dropped out, she missed the training in Greenland, pulling the sleds and staying for one month. Not to be left behind, Sorby has been reading and practicing emergency training.

When crossing the treacherous crevasse area, Sorby explained, three women will be joined by a rope, dragging their sleds following the tracks of a leader. The first person skis forward slowly, testing the snow in front to see if it is simply covering a crevasse.

If someone falls, it would be the leader, perhaps dangling with her heavy sled at the end of a rope. The three teammates on the surface would dig in with their poles, and have the last person inch her way to the first, helping her detach from the sled and climb up the rope. Then all three would bring the sled up.

“I had a lot of concerns. There are a lot of risks and no guarantees. A lot of what-ifs,” Sorby said. “What if we fail? What if something like (the crevasse accident) happens, and we are set back in our schedule?”

Sorby is the group’s youngest and tallest at 5-foot-7. The others are about 5-foot-3. Leader Bancroft of Minnesota is 37; the other two are from Colorado, Sue Giller, 46, and Anne Dal Vera, 37.

Sorby said she has been eating fats to increase her weight from a slim 126 pounds, and she laughed while remembering a friend who cooked her dinner, adding more feta cheese.

“I’m going to miss knowing how my friends are, knowing what happens to the people in my life while I’m gone,” Sorby said.

She takes out a picture of nearly 30 people, each holding hearts and a sign wishing her well. The photograph is of her friends and co-workers that Sorby will keep during the grueling trek for lifting her spirits when the heavy, ice-laden journey weighs her down.

Sorby has lived in San Diego five years and worked at Adventure 16, where she managed the business and later taught children and adults wilderness survival skills. Once settled comfortably in her home and job, Sorby says, she got bored and set out to find more active work.

Reaching goals, even one as overwhelming as crossing Antarctica, begins with individual initiative, Sorby says, calling herself an eternal optimist.

“I believe a person can do anything if they truly want it in their heart,” she said. “Just take one small step, and they are on their way . . . (but) you have to keep taking the steps.”

Sorby feels she will be able to make a difference to people in San Diego, even from the world’s cold south side.

“A lot of people will be watching us there, and someone in their living room might just get up off their chair and do something--even in a small degree.”

There is a historic difference and importance in being part of the first all-woman team to cross this Antarctic route on skis, Sorby said.

“This is great for other women, being a doer and having more roll models in your life,” Sorby said, sitting at her living room table beneath a portrait of Georgia O’Keefe. Historically, there are men’s names stuffed into the history books, with little recognition for women who have made a difference, she said.

Sorby says she has plans to write a book when she gets back and also join the lecture circuit. But, for the long term, should she accomplish the 1,500-mile expedition, Sorby says she doesn’t know what her next conquest would be.

“I want to be 100 years old, rock on my porch, in a house in the country, and have plenty of stories to tell. . . . I’m still young, I’ve got lots to do.”