June 21, 2018

Summer Solstice celebration in the ice sheet

A nontraditional June Solstice celebration in the dungeons of EGRIP with Glögg, disco-light and music. Kerim and Erik have made the Concert hall ready for next week.

The deep drilling is facing problems with the motor section and there has been almost no drilling today. The skilled team of drillers Trevor, Mori, Romain, Matthias, and Nicholas are working hard to solve the problems and, hopefully, the drilling will soon be able to continue.
Meanwhile, the loggers are having very good progress logging and cutting almost 80 m of the up to 3.5 m long ice cores into 1.65 m sections that are a lot more easy to handle in the ice core buffer. Tomorrow, the loggers are likely to have logged all of the ice in the ice core buffer, so that normal and less work demanding logging can take place. The firn gas sampling has terminated, but the shallow drilling continues, and packing of samples and equipment has started. In the trench, water isotope analysis, physical properties measurements, and DEP measurement of the deep core are ongoing. In the evening, the water vapour drone was flying again, and there was a firn-disko summer Solstice celebration in the under-snow concert hall, that Kerim and Erik have made ready for next week’s concert. 

What we did today:

1. Deep drilling 3.30 m. Drillers’ depth 1187.99 m.
2. Shallow drilling at firn site to 72.23 m depth
3. DEP measurement of main core 930.05-955.90 m depth
4. Measurements in isotope laboratory, final depth: 696.30 m
5. Measurements in physical properties laboratory, final depth 888.25 m
6. Logging and cutting of deep core 1096.30-1174.85 m
7. Water vapour sampling and measuring. The drone was up
8. Digging new outhouse – preparing for a full camp next week
9. First grooming of skiway with beam groomer
10. Removing snow blocks from roof at entrance of drill trench

Weather: Mostly blue sky with few high clouds. Temp. -8 ºC to -16 ºC.
Wind: dropping from 14 to 8 kt from SW turning S. Visibility: unrestricted.

FL, Anders Svensson

The water vapor sampling drone is reaching for the Moon.