May 12, 2022

First house on main street built

EGRIP put-in crew at suppertime.

In this reconstruction phase of camp, changes are happening every day.
Today we built the first of eight weatherports. Weatherports are insulated tents with doors and windows and a wooden floor. Most of them will be sleeping quarters for camp personnel, but one is set aside for storage of fresh and non-freeze food. They are placed in two rows in camp, and the area between the rows is called “main street”. Today, we also were able to excavate one of our three fuel tanks and pull it into position next to our main generator. We now have access to plenty of fuel. Chris has been able to remove the snow from the top half of our garages, this has removed a tremendous load from the structures. It appears the garages have survived three years of COVID abandonment. The plan is to all snow around the garages, empty them and pull them out of their holes. The holes will be backfilled and the garages will be pulled up on new snow hills and all inventory will be re-installed.

What we did today:

1. Cable to the food weatherport retrieved – pulled out of a 50 m tunnel at 2 m depth.
2. Excavated fuel tank and pulled it into position.
3. Removing snow from sides and from roof of mechanics garage.
4. Built Weatherport(WP) 8 and WP 9 (“freshie shack”) is in progress.
5. Removing snow and ice from around base of dome.
6. Cleaning tiller in cargoline for snow.
7. Grooming skiway.

Weather today: Clear blue skies. Temp. -39°C to -29°C. Wind: mostly calm later 4 kt from SW. Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen