The judges, SueEllen Campbell (Colorado State University), Ian Marshall (Penn State Altoona) and Sheryl St. Germain (Chatham College), liked the book's ability (like it's author) to go beyond boundaries and redefine the terms of nature writing.

"Legler pays as much attention to human life and social interaction at McMurdo Station as she does to the harsh life outside of it; her work presents an eloquent argument for seeing humans and human drama as part of, not separate from, nature."

"In a genre that so often features the first person, the almost-daring intimacy of Legler's book makes us think about how all those first persons we encounter in nature writing get constructed in fairly limited or limiting ways. Not here, though—it’s not just the immediacy of the first person encounters with Antarctic ice that draws us in, but the intimacy as well. On the Ice is a multifaceted love story, the story of a woman's searchfor self-love, the story of her desire for an extreme landscape, and the story of the surprising love she discovers for one she finds thriving in that landscape."

The award was presented at the ASLE conference held in June 2007.