June 12, 2024

Final Winkie shuttle flights and building of five pallets

Not only did Anders KH serve dinner for the EGRIP team and 12 unexpected GreenDrill visitors today, he also baked an EASTGRIP cake!


The Winkie team did two more shuttles to their site with the Basler plane today and picked up the last cargo and people. They had hoped to continue directly onwards to Kanger, but it became too late. Therefore, the entire GreenDrill team is in transit with us tonight and we were 23 for dinner. Fortunately, we had a little extra food stored away in the freezer and - more importantly - our cook Anders KH is very adaptable. So, everybody enjoyed a great dinner, not least the GreenDrill crew that has spent several weeks camping in the wilderness. On the surface, four Winkie and one EGRIP pallets have been built for the planned Hercules missions of which the first is scheduled for tomorrow. In the trenches there has been good progress, the workshop has now been emptied and is ready to be taken down. In the white tent, it was also a busy day with the inclined trench being almost done and the 1050 m cable spooling finished.

What we did today:

  1. Continued setting up intermediate drill system in white tent.
  2. Finalised building one EGRIP retro pallet for skier missions.
  3. Finalised building four Winkie pallets for skier missions.
  4. Emptied workshop Viesmann in drill trench.
  5. Two Basler shuttle flights to Winkie camp.
  6. Hosted the Greendrill team for dinner and for the night.

Weather today: Fortunately, weather has been on our side, mostly sunny and with wind along the skiway. Temp. from -12°C to -5°C. Wind: 6-12 kt mostly from SW.


FL, Anders Svensson

Finally, the workshop in the drill trench is empty! Over the last days Iben and Kyra have been filling one box after the other with tools, screws and nails. Now the shelves and tables will be removed and the Viesmann cabin can be taken down.

The Volleyball season has started at EGRIP. Yesterday evening under windy and cloudy conditions the teams were out.

The inclined trench is reaching its required depth. Nicholas is hiding at the bottom.

All set for spooling 1 km drill cable onto the intermediate drill winch. On top of the drill tower a cable tensioner is mounted to ensure a prober spooling of the cable.