Tuesday 2nd July 2024

Packing, moving snow and borehole logging

Sverrir is lifting the heavy winch of the intermediate drill out of the white tent with the Pistenbully crane

Over the last days a lot of fresh snow has fallen out of the sky and is now piled up all over. Last evening, Martin could kite ski in soft snow to the end of the World (i.e., to the outermost lead-in flags at the end of the skiway, some 5 km out). Today, Sverrir cleared camp for snow with the Pistenbully and Martin cleared trench entrances for drift snow again-again. It continued snowing today, though. Sepp and Kyra went out to the SE shear margin to do a temperature logging of shallow bore hole ExS5-01 in a complete whiteout. They spent the whole day out there as the temperature reading is done every 20 min at each depth. The white tent is cleared now, the heavy winch was removed with the Pistenbully crane and all equipment has been removed. Next step will be to refill the inclined trench with the snow blower.

What we did today:

1. Packing down intermediate drill system and core handling equipment
2. Packing and documenting boxes in carpenters’ garage
3. Strapping and weighing all ice core boxes (yesterday)
4. Temperature logging of shallow borehole ExS5-01
5. Made flag line radar survey S of camp

Weather today: Overcast and snowing in the morning, but improving during the afternoon becoming sunny and calm in the evening (= Volleyball conditions). Temperatures from -10 °C to -4.5 °C. Wind 2-10 kt from S and SE.

FL, Anders Svensson

Sepp is lowering the temperature logger into the ExS5-01 shallow borehole at the shear margin SE of camp