Tamara and Daniel operating the GPR radar in the finer grid.
May 4, 2024
Tamara and Daniel operating the GPR radar in the finer grid.
The weather today made the working conditions unpleasant. With temperature at -36°C and wind speed at 13 knots (windchill -51°C) at planned departure, even the snowmobiles had a hard time to start. The two mechanics at Summit Station worked on getting the snowmobiles to start for 1.5 hour but after getting the Herman Nilsson to heat up the machines, we could finally leave to the GRIP site.
The cold day also had an influence on our instruments, which had a hard time operating in the cold. But with the confidence about the location of the cat shovel yesterday and we think we found reflections from the drill dome, we switched to the 800 MHz antenna. This antenna has a higher vertical resolution compared to the one we used yesterday, thus it is better suited to detect structures in the upper layers. We continued doing a finer radar grid survey around those reflections we saw yesterday and hoping to see a clear signal from the upper part of the air-filled casing. We saw some weak features and started to dig at one we thought was most promising. But we didn't find anything in the 1.7 m deep hole and no obstacles under the 3m avalanche probe (i.e. no sign of the casing in the top 4.7 m there, except a harder snow layer at 3.1 m depth).
Tomorrow the weather forecast is bad with strong wind and doesn't allow us leaving the station. We will have a closer look at the data we collected so far, look at some of the old maps and come up with a plan for Monday, where the weather forecast seems good again.
What we did today:
Weather today: Cloudy day with wind and a bit of snow in the afternoon. Wind 7-15 kt turning from ESE to E. Temperatures between -39°C and -25°C.
Iben has started digging after the casing while Daniel continue the GPR radar survey in the background.
The mechanics at Summit trying to get the snowmobiles to start after a very cold night and morning.