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ALERT, Nunavut - The British adventurer stymied in her quest to become the first woman to ski solo to the North Pole has left the world's most northerly outpost with a smile, no regrets and a promise to try again next year.

"I'll be back, I'll be back," Hannah McKeand said Wednesday as she prepared to leave the Arctic military installation at Alert on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island and fly to the hamlet of Resolute further south.

"I love big wilderness. I love being out there alone. It's what I do."

McKeand of Newbury, England, was 14 days into a planned 60-day, 770-kilometre trek when injury cut her plans short.

Travelling conditions were much more difficult than the experienced adventurer had expected and she had only crossed about 60 kilometres from Ward Hunt Island off the northern coast of Ellesmere.

Although snow is usually hard-packed and wind-swept across the sea ice, this year was anything but.

"It was horrible," said McKeand. "It was very, very deep snow. I was knee-deep at times."

The sled full of her supplies and gear was cutting "a trough" in the snow behind her, she said. The ice was also full of pressure ridges that form when two ice sheets push up against each other.

McKeand had unhooked herself from her sled and was scouting a way across a particularly big ridge when she ran into trouble.

Thinking she was safe on the up-thrust edge of the ridge, she suddenly fell through a thin layer of snow that covered a gap between the two ice sheets. She fell more than two metres, but fortunately it was onto freshly frozen ice instead of open water.

"I fell into this deep, deep hole, over my head," said McKeand, who is six-foot-two. "I thought I'd just climb out."

There was, however, no easy way out of the triangular trap. With a badly injured left shoulder - doctors in Alert suggest it's at least badly sprained and at worst could be separated - she couldn't hoist herself free.

"It was a pretty nasty hour. I had a good cry at one point."

Eventually, she used her ski tip to knock down a pile of snow from the edge of the hole. She braced the tail of her ski in the pile and used her ski binding as a step to climb out.

Despite her injury, McKeand managed to set up her tent and call her base camp. The next morning, she said, "it became apparent that I couldn't go on."

Chartering a rescue plane wasn't an option on the rough and jagged icefield. The nearest helicopters were at Resolute, where technicians had just finished disassembling them for transport back south.

Crews worked through the night to reassemble a Canadian Forces Griffon to bring McKeand back to Alert.

"Bless them," said McKeand. "They were just superb. I was lucky. I could have sat up there for a couple weeks."

The gregarious 34-year-old quickly won over base personnel. She became the centre of animated mess hall conversations and, as she boarded her southbound plane, the recipient of many good wishes.

It's not the end she had hoped for after a year's worth of planning and a nearly $250,000 investment.

"It was a bit disappointing to put in all that planning and have it go pear-shaped," she said. "People say, 'Oh, you must be gutted.' But actually, no.

"People come up to these environments and try to do incredibly difficult things not because they're easy and we assume we're going to succeed, but because the trying is the important part."