May 23, 2024

New sights in camp

Left: The flagline always makes the camp nicer, and the white/green tent to the left in the pictures is the antenna-station for the Cryo-egg and Cryo-pølse experiments. Antennas can be seen outside the tent.
Right: The Cryo-egg is seen upper left, while the two units of the Cryo-pølse are an antenna-unit (black, big diamater) and a measurement unit to be deployed into the deepest part of the bore hole (narrow diamater metallic) and connected with cables to the antenna unit above. Candy, lower right for scale.

Today Susanne put up the flag line on the main street in camp, it is always a nice sight to see the flags up for all the EGRIP partners and otherwise participating nations here at EGRIP this season. To the left of the main street (as seen from the dome), Mike put up a small white/green pop-up tent for the Cryo-egg and Cryo-pølse (pølse = sausage in Danish) antenna base station. The Cryo-egg is a small spherical device developed to be deployed into running water channels within or under an ice sheet, and transmit measurement data to the surface antenna station. The Cryo-pølse has an elongated shape and is designed to be deployed at the bottom of a bore hole, again for continues measurements to be transmitted to the surface. We are all keeping our fingers crossed that the ingenious devices will help understanding basal and subglacial properties in the future.
In the drill trench, Dorthe tried once again to get the old logger to descent into the deepest part of the bore hole, but again without success. We believe it is the shorter length of the logger (compared to the ice core drill) that makes it unable to traverse the cavity created by glycol deployment in this section of the bore hole, where the inclination is 3°.
The camp surface has also started to change today, as Sverrir uses a Pistenbully to level out snowdrifts around the dome and between the garage tent. Making the “terrain” less interesting but much easier for all of us to navigate when moving around camp. The twin otter flew a further three successful missions to the Greendrill camp at the Winkie-site, so the deployment is moving ahead at a rapid clip.
In the dome, Martin entertained us all with his fantastic pictures from NEEM and the closed down DYE-3 early warning radar station, right before we moved on to the second movie night of the season.

What we did today:

1. Logging bore hole with old logger.
2. Continued preparations for our intermediate depth drill system in white garage.
3. Received, refueled and loaded Greendrill cargo on the Twin Otter three times.
4. Put up flag line in main street.
5. Started leveling snowdrifts in camp.
6. Put up antennas for communication with Cryo-egg and Cryo-pølse.
7. Presentation of beautiful 10-15 years old pictures from NEEM and DYE-3.
8. Movie night.

Weather today: Sunny and temp. from -33°C to -20°C. Wind: From W, 3-7 kts. Visibility: Unrestricted.

Dorthe in the drillers cabin monitoring the down hole deployment of the old bore hole logger.