May 24, 2022

Many activities

The TUNU team is staging cargo for TUNU camp. The Basler will fly it to TUNU.

Today, we received the last LC-130 flight in this period. Next flight will be 6th June. The KBA Basler is stationed here for a few days to deploy the U.S. TUNU drilling team at their drilling camp some 300 km North of here. The Basler made two return flights to TUNU. At EGRIP, the TUNU team also tested their ground penetrating radar mounted on an Arctic Truck. The radar can detect crevasses. And they detected one! The “crevasse”, however, was man made, because they were permitted to pass over our science cave and the radar “saw” the void below the surface. A successful test. The radar works. The snow surface science program is beginning. Quite a few people participate in completing the restauration of camp. In the storage cave, many ice core boxes are stuck along the walls due to three years of snow compression. They have to be cut free with care. We will use all these ice core boxes to store all the items we have in camp supplies in the carpenter’s garage, while we empty the garage before we lift it to a new snow hill.

What we did today:

1. Receiving one LC-130 flight.
2. Handling two Basler missions to TUNU site.
3. Excavation and emptying carpenter’s garage in progress.
4. Remnants of old skiway markers removed.
5. TUNU team tested Arctic Trucks and gpr.
6. Freeing “locked” ice core boxes in storage cave.
7. Surface snow “bamboo forest” has been found.

Weather today: Very thin haze/low clouds. Temp. -24°C to -17°C. Wind: 0 kt calm. QNH 994 hPa. Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen