June 27, 2023

The Warmest Day

The snowman Ilka made for her son

Our weather forecaster Marc de Kaiser had predicted this to be the warmest day of this year. And it was. We had plus temperatures up to 1.5°C and high winds from NE. The surface became wet and we could form a snowman. The high wind blew one of the yellow toilet tents away…. All in all, a memorable day. We praise the luck that we had the flight mission yesterday as it would not have been possible today. In the trenches the excitement of approaching the bedrock continues. Each ice core drilled, shows differences and we collect a lot of ice cutting on top of the ice cores. Some ice core breaks are very high others not.. ice crystals still seem to be large. We are ready for bedrock. The Liquid level pinger is operational so we can see when we penetrate to the water system under the ice, the baller to bring clean liquid to the bottom and the camera hanging under the bailer are ready to deploy… Fingers crossed that we can continue with the successful drilling.

What we did today:

1. Drilled two ice cores (last run 1130, drillers depth 2641.2 m).
2. Logging depth: 2654.15 m. Processing depth: 2651.00 m bag 4822.
3. Weighed ice core boxes in science trench.
4. Washed windows in Dome.
5. Maintenance on vehicles.
6. Moved drill liquid drums to drill trench in preparation of reaching bedrock.
7. Chiara cooked GREAT meals again.

Weather today: Scattered clouds, NE winds up to 18 kn dropping to no wind during the night. Temperatures up to +1.5°C during the day and down to -5°C during the night.

FL, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

The drillers Steff and Trevor inspecting the 1.2 m ice core with the 1 m ice cutting on top together with the drillers Derryn and Nan.

The missing toilet tent.