June 9, 2019

Summer and birds have arrived to EGRIP

Despite the overcast and somewhat windy conditions, the ice bar in front of main dome was open for happy hour.

Saturday it was overcast and temperatures went up to -4°C for the first time this season. Camp was visited by four birds, of which two were geese, that all moved on after an EGRIP pit-stop. Unfortunately, wind picked up Saturday night, so the planned outdoor barbeque had to be moved indoor. Ice bar and ball game, however, took place outside as planned. Dinner involved many cooks including Mori (Japanese stew), AK and Lucas (salads), Matthias (grilled meat) and Søren (dessert ‘fødselsdagsvandbakkelser’). Saturday, the MAGPIE team made a third 100 km leg to the SE, setting up two more stations at 50 km and 100 km distance. The deep drilling appears to be back on track after the skates had been sharpened. Penetration is fast, but there has been a few hard core breaks (1.8 tons). Most of the weekend has been spent filtering the hole. We hope for a normal, full production week starting tomorrow.
Sunday evening we watched the Dansgaard GRIP movie and the Camp Century construction movie, just to get in the right mood.

What we did today:

1. Drilling speed has increased and the hole is clean, so we hope for routine conditions.
2. Ice core logging depth: Sat 1869.5 m (length: 9.3 m), Sun 1873.0 m (3.5 m).
3. Station for atmospheric moisture sampling and isotopic measurement is active.
4. The isotope CFA laboratory bag 2956 to bag 2997 (length 22.55 m).
5. MAGPIE set up two more stations at 50 km and 100 km SE of EGRIP.
6. Making room in ice core buffer for 200m ice core to be drilled the coming weeks.
7. Clearing entrance to concert hall.
8. Successfully testing AWI deep drilling seismic detector.

EGRIP population is 24. EGRIP average age is 37 years.

Weather: Saturday overcast and warm. Temp. -4°C to -13°C. Wind: 4 kt to 10 kt from W and SW. Sunday mostly sunny with some high clouds passing by. Temp. -5°C to -12°C. Wind: 3 kt to 18 kt from SW.

FL, Anders Svensson

RUN – RUN –RUN! This popular kid’s ball game provided good pre-dinner running exercise.