July 5, 2019

Making room

Left: Hamid measured a total of 75 bags today, richly deserving the note on the snow wall. Right: Toilet hole digging team: Jan, Kevin, Will, Margit and Aslak, looking up from an impressive depth of 5.67m.

Next week we will have a flight period with many new camp members, DVs and other guests coming to camp. Hence we have to make room for more people in camp, and the first step is to make sure there is room in our toilet tents. Thus a crew of five people got started making a new toilet hole, as the old one certainly would not have space enough for much longer. And we are happy to report a 5.67m hole now in operation!
In the drill trench the atmosphere has been tense all day, as all the core breaks are now basically at the limit of the pulling capacity of the winch. This will be unsustainable in the long run, so we are all hoping that it is just a temporary feature of the ice we are drilling right now. While the extremely hard core breaks are a headache for our drilling operation, they are scientifically interesting, and thus a core sample from 2090m depth have been taken to the physical properties lab. for immediate study.
Otherwise work continued steadily in science trench, with Hamid at the DEP being almost unstoppable DEP’ing at total of 75 bags today. The surface all programs are also running nicely, with both surface and atmospheric measurements running to schedule.

What we did during the day:

1. Drilling 6 runs despite winch spooling issues, intensified filtering and hard core breaks.
2. Logging 6 runs, logged length 17.92m, logged depth 2105.03m.
3. Ice core processing of 48 bags, including special gas-samples, last bag 3535.
4. CFA measurements of 33 bags, last bag 3289.
5. PP measurements in science trench having some technical difficulties, last bag 3476.
6. Station for atmospheric moisture sampling and isotopic measurement is active.
7. Digging new hole for toilet tent, and relocating toilet.
8. Grooming of skiway.
9. Setting up shallow winch at S7 drill site, and drilling from 40m to 55m.

EGRIP population is 33.

Weather: Wind between 2kts and 8kts from WNW. Mostly cloudy, but clearing towards the evening. Temperatures from -14°C to -5°C.

FL, Bo Vinther