Events › Awesome Antarctica Speaker Series - Skiing to the South Pole

Awesome Antarctica Speaker Series an engaging arc of educational events leading up to Days of Ice (2-8 October).

Awesome Antarctica Speaker Series | Skiing to the South Pole - Laura Andrews

You are warmly invited to join Laura Andrews for an evening of exploration and inspiration. Laura is a young explorer who recently skied almost 1000km on a journey to the South Pole. The 28-year-old Kiwi is a firefighter and medical first responder working for Auckland Airport Emergency Services.

Register for the event at the link

Laura talks about her epic 50 day Inspiring Explorers Expedition™ skiing to the South Pole, how she developed an explorer mindset, and the lessons she learned from the past and present to better prepare for the future.

Along the way, Laura learned how curiosity leads to innovation and creativity, and discovered the importance of resilience in preparing ourselves to handle the unexpected. This expedition also developed Laura’s endurance – making sure you persevere and show up each day, even when you don’t feel like it.

In 2022 Laura was selected by Antarctic Heritage Trust to join a Kiwi-Norwegian team of Inspiring Explorers™ that would ski 920km from the edge of the Ronne Ice Shelf to the South Pole over 50 days. The team towed sleds through a maze of sastrugi and around crevasse fields, while experiencing extreme winds, punishing sub-zero temperatures and the effects of altitude to reach the South Pole on 6 January 2023.

Laura thrives on pushing her physical and mental boundaries and feels inspired by previous explorers. She has previously spent three months walking the length of Te Araroa, Te Waipounamu solo, cycled the length of New Zealand along the Tour Aotearoa route, competed in endurance, adventure and ironman races in New Zealand and firefighter stair climbs internationally.