May 10, 2018

A very special day. EGRIP turned into an airport.

EGRIP airport. Two twin Otters and one Basler (DC3) on the EGRIP apron today.

Today, we received a visit of a group of distinguished visitors. It consisted of a mainly Swiss delegation of senior scientists, decision makers, the press, and the Swiss Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark.
The group arrived in two aeroplanes, and as we already have the Basler flying radar missions, it turned into a busy day in the EGRIP “Control tower”. The weather was fine, albeit low temperatures. During the 6 hour stay, the group was shown around in the snow caves, the camp, there was a scientific briefing in the main dome and they participated in camp lunch. On departure, the group looked really happy to have made the visit. Otherwise work in the trenches continued in order to make trenches ready for drilling and ice core processing.

What we did today:

1. Working on making the inclined trench deeper. The borehole casing needs to be shortened.
2. German Basler flew two 3 hour missions today.
3. Received two Twin Otters with distinguished visitors and journalists.
4. Logging ice cores to 748.87 m.
5. Trimming walls in science trench.
6. Calibrating water vapour sampling site.
7. Grooming skiway.
8. Moving snow between carpenter’s and mechanic’s garage.

Weather today: Fine day. Temp. -22°C to -36°C. Wind: 8 kt to 18 kt from SW and SSW. Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen