May 10, 2023

A small trip out of camp

Anna-Maria digging out seismic instrumentation some 13km east of camp.

Today Nico and Anna-Maria made a small trip on two skidoos out of camp in order to recover seismic instrumentation left last season. It was Anna-Marias first trip completely into the open and quiet surroundings of our camp – always an awe-inspiring experience.
In the drill trench, we had another first, with Emma completing her first deep drill run, the second of the day. Both of todays core was of a length of more than 3m. During push-out of the first core it was discovered that we had some misalignment around the fluid extraction device, which caused 2 breaks in the otherwise beautiful full length ice core. After Grant adjusted the alignment the second push-out of the day went without incident, leaving another beautiful core for the loggers to tend to in the morning.
On the surface, Sverrir moved one of the fuel tanks from its position near the apron to a new location next to the main generator. The third Pistenbully has also been moved from its winter snow hill position to near the mechanics garage for further servicing. Sepp continues to identify and gather retro-cargo for next week’s flight. Anna-Maria and Bo manged to furnish the last Weatherport, while Bruno continues the enormous task of organizing cables in the Cupola of the dome.

What we did today:

1. Drillled two ice cores, drillers lengths. 3.50m and 3.14m.
2. Logged first ice core of the day, logged length 3.55m, loggers depth 2425.24m
3. Moved fuel tank.
4. Working on getting the third Pistenbully operational.
5. Recovered seismometer instrumentation from 3 positions east of camp.
6. Worked on organizing IT and electrical cables in Cuupola.
7. Continued identifying and gathering retro-cargo for next week’s flight.

Weather today: Sunny. Temp. -34°C to -23°C. Wind: between 6kt and 13 kt turning from WSW to SSW during the day. Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, Bo M. Vinther

A Pistenbully moving one of our fuel tanks today.