June 30 + July 1, 2018

A busy Weekend

Left: Omelettes for Sunday brunch is prepared to order by our doctor Lasse and our chef Frederik: Right: Melanie, Anja and Siwan prepared Welsh style lamb with a mint sauce for Saturday dinner – supervised by Dewi the red Welsh dragon.

Saturday we received Skier 61 further resupplying camp with fuel and drill liquid. A great relief to see the Skier finding its way to our skiway in between snow showers, and taking off again using approx. a third of the skiway. This entire operation was a great testimony both to the professionalism and dedication of the 109th air crews and to Chris, who has carefully groomed our skiway to this excellent state. Skier 61 also kindly took a pallet of ice core boxes back to Kangerlussuaq – boxes palletized quickly by the processing crew assisted by our Japanese crew members. In the drill trench cleaning of the bore hole continued through the weekend with a further 220kg of chips recovered. Hence a total of 300 kg of chips have been recovered from the bore hole so far, and the drillers expect to continue the operation through Tuesday. The processing line, the physical properties measurements and the isotope CFA are all picking up speed with the new crew members getting used to all the routines. At the RADIX site, drilling preparation continued – only interrupted by our excellent Saturday dinner prepared by Siwan, Anja and Melanie, who were kindly assisted by our chef Frederik. After a not so late close of our traditional Saturday party (new crew members still getting used to the altitude), work started at 11 Sunday, and we were all treated with brunch for lunch by Frederik and Lasse – including omelette a la carte!

What we did today:

1. Filter runs retrieving a further 220kg of chips from the main bore hole.
2. Receiving Skier 61 bringing fuel and drill liquid.
3. Handling and sorting cargo from Skier 61.
4. Processing of EGRIP main core in the science trench, final depth: 1218.25 m.
5. Measurements in isotope laboratory, final depth: 789.25 m.
6. Measurements in physical properties laboratory, final depth: 1185.80m.
7. Water vapour sampling and measuring.
8. Setup of Japanese snow crystal and surface monitoring site, some 200m south of camp.
9. Preparing for drilling at RADIX site, pressure test of casing.

Weather: Cloudy with intermittent light snow Saturday and clear blue sky most of the day Sunday. Temperature -20 ºC to -1 ºC. No wind during Saturday morning, but then slowly increasing to 11 kt Sunday evening while gradually changing 180 deg from NE through SE to SW.

FL, Bo Vinther