May 25+26, 2024

A quiet weekend

A suite of ApRES stations needs to be dug out up to 30km away from camp. From left to right: David, Susanne, Astrid and Sepp at various stages of excavation.

Saturday morning, we waved goodbye to the Greendrill Twin Otter for the last time, as the Greendrill camp is now fully operational and staffed.
Hence the 3 Twin Otter crew as well as Zoe from the Greendrill program, left camp for Upernavik, reducing EGRIP population to just 12. After a week where EGRIP population for a few hours Monday reached 38, camp now feels really quiet! Nevertheless, we have plenty to do here in order to finalize drill tests and measurements in the deep bore hole as well as making camp ready for next years planned traverse to the GRIP drill site.
Saturday the drillers made one more attempt at drilling into the partly refrozen mix at the bottom of the bore hole, but this time without success. With the two cores with refrozen ice and mud we believe we have sufficient material, thus it was decided to discontinue the drilling, making the deep hole available to do experiments with the Cryo-egg.
Hence, Mike started the Cryo-egg deployment Sunday.
On the surface around EGRIP a suite of ApRES stations were deployed in 2022. These all needs to be recovered, so Saturday and Sunday we had Sepp and Susanne going out of camp accompanied by David (Saturday) and Astrid (Sunday) for ApRES excavation work. Three ApRES stations were recovered and brought to camp.
In camp Sverrir continues his efforts to make the surface nice and level, now focusing on the area around the last garage tents, while the drillers are starting to pack up all the many items in the drill and science trenches. It is a huge and important task as we need to sort out what to include on next year’s travers and what to airlift out of camp.
As usual the weekend also included some relaxation and festivities, with Dorthe and Steff preparing steaks, oven baked potatoes and eggplant mouse for the Saturday dinner, and Astrid making ice cream for us.
Sunday morning as usual started with a nice brunch prepared by Astrid with some assistance by Martin. Sunday evening we enjoyed another relaxing movie night in camp.

What we did during the weekend:

1. Unsuccessful attempt to drill one more core.
2. Deployed Cryo-egg in bore hole.
3. Started pack-up of cargo from trenches for next flight period.
4. Continued preparations for our intermediate depth drill system in white garage.
5. Waved goodbye to the Twin Otter, departing for Upernavik after completion of Greendrill put in.
6. Continued leveling snowdrifts in camp.
7. Recovered 3 out of camp ApRES stations (1 Saturday, 2 Sunday) for a total of 4 stations recovered.
8. Saturday night dinner-party and movie night Sunday.

Weather this weekend: Sunny and temp. from -28°C to -21°C Saturday, increasing to -7°C Sunday. Wind: Calm Saturday afternoon and evening, increasing to up to 18kt from S on Sunday. Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, Bo M. Vinther

Eggs in various shapes at EGRIP this Sunday! Left: Martin, Mike and Grant next to Mike’s Cryo-egg before deployment into the bore hole. Right: Astrid is preparing scrambled eggs for our Sunday brunch, while Martin assists with pancakes.