July 1+2, 2017

A really nice weekend

Basile and Nora sampling the pit on Sunday.

At EGRIP weekends are always nice, with our traditional Saturday dinner and party, but this weekend even included Basile’s birthday, a nice vegetarian Saturday dinner and Pizza to order on Sunday – all accompanied by sunny skies and low winds. What a change from the windy Friday evening!
In the science trench water isotope measurements and physical properties measurements continued, as did the surface science program. On his birthday Basil dug a 4 meter pit together with Nora, and sampled it for water isotopes in high resolution. On Saturday the hand auger coring was resumed and terminated at 14.2 meters depth.
In the drill trench coring continued, although at a slower pace due to some runs with drill penetration problems. In the logging cabin, the ice is showing increasing signs of brittleness, but a re-alignment of the logging setup Sunday, seems to have solved the core handling problems for now. The cooling unit in the logging cabin was defrosted for a long time (13 hours) between Saturday and Sunday, but a significant amount of ice remains. Cooling performance did, however improve markedly.

What we did during the weekend:

1. Removing snow drifts all over camp.
2. Celebrated Basile’s birthday.
3. Deep drilling core length Sunday at 19.00: 17.06 m.
4. Logging depth at 19.00, Sunday: 565.79 m.
5. Defrosting ice core logging cooler for 13 hours (during evening/night Saturday/Sunday).
6. Water isotopes: Calibration and melting of bags 60 to 79.
7. Water vapour, methane, aerosols, snow and boundary layer measurements
8. Physical properties measurements.
9. Finished hand-auger core 350 m WSW of drill trench (findal depth 14.2 meters)
10. Dug 4 meter snow pit 150 m WSW of drill trench and sampled it for water isotopes.

Weather: Mostly sunny with light winds from varying directions and good visibility. Temperature between -20°C and -11°C.

FL, Bo Vinther

The current team at EGRIP, outside the dome right after the Saturday dinner.