June 2, 2024

A Sunday that feels like Monday

Emptying the drill trench is hard work, as many heavy items are needed for deep drilling operations. Luckily a snowy floor allows for sliding, but still the heavy tools needs both Sverrir pushing (left picture) and Grant and Martin pulling (right picture).

The idea of moving up our Saturday, was of course to have an extra work day with good weather conditions. Hence our Sunday turned into a normal workday, feeling very much like Monday. As we hoped for, the weather permitted operations on the surface, so we started out the pallet building and gathering of loose load for this week’s flight. Most items come from the trenches, so quite a few sledge loads needed to be driven up the ramp, and all the way out to the apron. We still have a lot to do, but when you look in the trenches now, there just seems to be some more space, due to our efforts, and the piles of cargo next to the apron are growing.
Before lunch the drillers also managed to do the last filter run, successfully going all the way to the bottom, so we are sure that the entire liquid column has been filtered. The EGRIP bore hole is a legacy we leave behind, so filtering the liquid is an important first step in securing access to the bore hole for the future.
For us not to completely forget that our “Monday” was in fact a Sunday, we had another nice movie night in camp to put a nice final touch to a busy day.

What we did today:

1. Last filter run to leave a clean bore hole.
2. Continued packing down in drill trench.
3. Movement of packed equipment to apron.
4. Readying pallets at apron.
5. Packing down of Cryo-egg/pølse equipment.
6. Packing down / drying out of bore hole logger and logger calibration rig.
7. Movie night.

Weather today: Mostly cloudy with some sunny spells especially before lunch. Temp. from -28 C°to -18°C. Wind: 4-14 kt from WNW turning NNW and decreasing during the day, Visibility: Changing and unrestricted during sunny spells.

Left: Next step is to get the heavy items on the sled and up the ramp, Sverrir is driving, Susanne monitoring and adding weight for better tracktion, while Martin and David prevents any backsliding. Right: Sverrir, Grant, Bo and David getting the cover-box in place.

Left: Finally the heavy items are positioned on air force pallets, using the Pistenbully crane. Right: Susanne, David and Astrid even worked with a smile, or are they just being polite to the photographer? Martin is busy enlarging the trench in the background.