A major effort this weekend was to extend the main bore hole casing up to surface and to backfill with snow around the casing in order to secure it for future applications. Drilling in the white tent continued at slower pace this weekend as an effort was made to integrate the new drill electronics into the drill setup, rather than using the older control box from the main drill as done so far. This upgrade will allow to run the drill and all features on the integrated windows machine in the control box (instead of raspberry pie in the deep surface unit). However, the drilling most likely passed a milestone as a preliminary interpretation of the ECM profile suggests that the core contains the acidity layer originating from the devastating Icelandic Laki eruption that occurred in 1783 AD. Saturday night dinner was composed of south-German specialities: Kyra made tasty, homemade Käsespätzle EGRIP style and Sepp prepared his famous Apfelstrudel for dessert. With that came locally produced Quitten- und Williamsbirnenbrand (schnapps) to strengthen digestion. Sunday it was Anders KHs 60 years birthday that was celebrated with a delicious layered cake made by Iben and Kyra. Anders chose wash board, spoons and pan flute as birthday instruments.

Weather over the weekend: Saturday was mostly overcast, the night to Sunday was entirely calm with some snowfall and Sunday was mostly sunny. Temperatures from -14°C to -8°C. Wind 0-6 kt from S and SW.

The large snow blower was mounted on the Pistenbully to dig through the roof of the drilling trench.

Sverrir is lowering the casing extension to Sepp who is receiving it in the drill trench below.

The extended casing reaching surface as seen from the drill trench.

Nicholas implementing the code to run the drill with the integrated hardware in the control box.

Anders KHs 60 years birthday cake and Anders.

Preliminary interpretation of the S10 ECM profile: The Icelandic Laki volcanic eruption occurring in 1783 AD detected in the S10 shallow-core ECM profile and compared to the same profile from EGRIP main core. The ECM is a measure of how much sulfuric acid has been deposited on the ice. Since almost a decade has passed since the main core was drilled, we find the Laki horizon about 2 m deeper in the S10 core than in the main core. A couple of other well-known volcanic spikes are also identified. Tambora 1815 AD was a much larger eruption than the Laki eruption, but since it occurred in present-day Indonesia the amount of sulfuric acid reaching Greenland is lower than that of Laki. For the S10 ECM, the three colors represent repeated measurements.

Casing extension, Saturday night, a birthday and a well-known volcanic layer