Friday 21st June 2024

Good drilling progress on the Greenland national day

Good progress in the white drill tent

Drilling speeded up considerably with 24 metres drilled today. The drill seems to function really well, although there are still adjustments to be made to the setup, and it would also be great to retrieve somewhat longer cores. We are currently making a density profile and an Electrical Conductivity Measurement (ECM) profile. These profiles can be compared to those of the main EGRIP core to see if we can match the cores up and date the new core that is named EGRIP S10. Around midday JP fired up the large snow blower that is mounted on a Pistenbully and blew a hole through the roof of the drill trench to make it possible to extend the bore hole casing up to surface. When the casing extension has been mounted it needs to be packed in snow to protect it for many years to come. In the afternoon, Knut and Lee went back to the shear zone south of camp to obtain a grid of radar profiles in that zone.

What we did today:

1. Faster drilling in white tent. Logger’s depth: 48.06 m (24.07 m drilled)
2. Made hole through drill trench roof to extend casing to surface
3. Knut’s radar team went beyond the ice stream shear zone some 35 km S of camp
4. Worked on density and hand-held ECM profiles for S10
5. Started documenting electronics in camp

Weather today: Yesterday we enjoyed a sunny Solstice (one day earlier due to leap year), but today the weather was all confused with both overcast, snow, sunshine and wind from unusual directions. Temperatures from -22°C to -8°C. Wind 0-10 kt from W->N->E.

FL, Anders Svensson