July 21, 2023

BEDROCK

Our drillers, Steff and Trevor, with the bedrock mud core (gray scale, taken in red light).

Having good weather in camp, it was a surprise that icing conditions enroute made it impossible to fly to EGRIP. This turned out to be our really good luck, because it gave us an extra day to drill before all drillers left camp.
After taking the camera down to check if the missing tubes from the rock drill were in the large or small diameter borehole, the drill with the top part of the rock drill was lowered down with the plan to catch and re-skrew the bottom part onto the top part.
Well – it worked and after the two parts were re-united, 5-10 cm more was drilled. But when attempting to pull up, the drill was stuck! After a few attempts rotating the drill forwards and backwards (with the risk of detaching at the bayonet or between the rods of the rock drill) the drill came free and was pulled up.
Until arrival at the surface, it was unknown what part of the drill would actually make it. It was thus fantastic and thrilling to get the whole drill up – including a core in which the bottom part consisted of water soaked mud, refrozen on the way up through the -32°C cold borehole!
We believe the bottom part of the drill got stuck in water saturated mud under the ice and that pulling up was hard because of the suction from the mud.
A day with enormous ups and downs, no plane, being able to fish the drill, getting stuck at the bed and finally getting mud up from under the ice.
A press release will shortly be sent around to all nationals to celebrate that we successfully have drilled though the ice into the mud.

What we did today:

1. Got drill and bedrock core up.
2. Flight mission to camp cancelled due to icing conditions enroute.

Weather today: Groundfog in the early morning. Lifting to be a sunny day. Wind 8 kt descreasing to 0 kt from W turning to WSW. Temperatures between -10°C and -4°C.

FL, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

Image of the last core (gray scale, taken in red light).

Dorthe and Steff looking at the bedrock mud core (gray scale, taken in red light).

Trevor’s boots with splashes of mud.