July 17, 2023

Pebbles

Image of pebbles and a piece of metal from the drill. The biggest pebble is 1 mm in size.

Being SO close to the bedrock and having such a hard time penetrating is challenging. The drill team is determined and keeps going overcoming one obstacle after the other. A great team with Steffen, Trevor, Nan, Martin and Derryn fighting hard. Today, after using the morning to fix the cables and connectors the drill shorted at the bottom after rock drilling for 45 min. The core was too short to be recovered. So new repairs and try again tomorrow. Chiara made fabulous food for us again and this helps keeping up the hard work.
Sepp found a few pebbles and a bit of metal from the drill in the core trough and this clearly shows that we do have rock material in the ice at the base.

What we did today:

1. Problems with shorts in the electrical connectors at the top of the drill.
2. Looking at some pebbles not embedded in the ice.
3. Calibration of old logger in stand (data saved).
4. Documented and repacked equipment in carpenters garage.
5. Maintained skidoos for radar traverse next week.
6. Packed drill equipment.

Weather today: Ground fog in the early morning. Thin overcast most of the day. Wind between 0 kt and 4 kt from S. Temperatures between -16°C and -4°C.

FL, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen