Left: Some of the main “characters” in our bear-exercise: Steff (Rifle-responsible), Jan T (“Polar bear”), Tine (Exercise monitor) and Chris (Evacuation-vehicle-operator). Right: Kevin, Margit, Abby and Tyler doing a completely different kind of exercising in the Dome.

In the past four seasons EGRIP camp unfortunately has had a total of two polar bears making it to our location, despite the more than 400km trek needed to come from the coast all the way to our remote field site here on the Greenland ice sheet. While polar bears are magnificent creatures to behold, they also do merit continued preparedness in our camp. Our outermost layer of bear-detection is a doppler radar system, but the vigilance and readiness of all camp members is even more important. Hence at 06.25 in the morning one of the drillers (Jan T) could be seen in camp wearing a sheep’s-skin, playing a polar bear and thus setting our “Bear-in-camp” exercise into motion. A few minutes later our morning-watch person (Kerim) discovered the “bear-in-sheep’s-clothing” and activated the camp siren system bringing all in camp to attention. Thus, the exercise was in full motion, with both close monitoring of the “bear” and evacuation of all camp members to the dome being carried out in an efficient, safe and orderly manner. And with all operations being carefully observed, noted down and time-stamped by our camp doctor (Tine) for later evaluation. Even though all in camp had been briefed well in advance of the exact time of the exercise, it still all felt eerily realistic. And a thorough debrief session (that took place right after the exercise was successfully completed) gave valuable input to our continued efforts to improve camp readiness in case of any kind of emergency.
Later in the day a much different kind of exercising could be seen here at EGRIP – suddenly the first floor of the Dome had turned into a workout-centre, with breathless instructions blaring out of our speaker system – almost invariably for people to push them selves just a little bit harder. The seemingly unstoppable video-fitness-guy tirelessly pushing on and on – his studio clearly not being at high elevation! Amazingly, Abby, Margit, Kevin and Tyler seemed to be able to keep up with the maddening pace, so maybe we have just found the crew that we need for cutting and carrying snow blocks out of our trenches next season….?
After all the exercising - work continued in both trenches. Good progress is being made everywhere, with all being busy drilling, cutting or measuring ice. Also on the surface all programs are continued at pace, with surface and atmospheric measurements, as well as the GPS-stake remeasurements around last years RADIX camp being half-way completed during the day.

Weather: Wind between 2kts and 10kts turning form NE to SSW right after noon. Mostly cloudy with outbreaks of snow, but also a few sunny spells. Temperatures from -9°C to -6°C.

Exercise-day