Some days are more difficult than others when doing filed work, and today we had one of the more “interesting” days! The drillers lowered a high-res camara down in the upper part of the deep borehole, and an unpleasant surprise: glass-fiber in the bore hole! The casing pipe lining the upper part of the old GRIP bore hole is made of fiberglass, and the pipe has suffered some damage. As our ice core drill isn’t made for drilling fiberglass, these fiber glass obstacles need to be removed one way or the other, but how? This will be a challenge for the drill team during the coming weeks! Weather can also be an obstacle to progress here on the ice sheet, and that was true for the GEUS team today. First, they needed to wait for weather to clear here at GRIP, and then when they finally made it to Site A, the sunny and warm conditions there made installing the automatic weather station easy, but leaving Site A again hard. It was simply too warm, making the snow surface so sticky, that the Twin Otter could not gain enough speed to get airborne! The GEUS team thus had to wait for the temperature to drop, having an evening meal next to the plane – all in good spirits and enjoying the nice weather. Finally, around 23.00 the Twin Otter got airborne heading to GRIP. However, here ground fog formed before the Twin Otter arrived, but the skilled Icelandic pilots landed the Twin Otter safely on snow here at GRIP just before midnight, ending a long but successful mission to deploy the automatic weather station to Site A. In camp the moderate winds before lunch made it possible to mount a further 6 solar panels, and we also managed to finalize both retro cargo pallets and grooming for tomorrows LC130 flight. And there was also progress with the luminescence measurements. Hence, a challenging, but in the end good day here at GRIP.
What we did this Friday:
- Prepared GoPro camara and lowered it into casing, revealing damage.
- Prepared cable termination and disassembled the anti-torque section.
- Made drill motor test on the tower.
- Groomed taxiways and apron.
- Fueled the GEUS Twin Otter, and received it after today’s mission to Site A.
- Finalized retro-cargo for tomorrows Skier mission.
- Mounted 6 solar panels on the dome, 71 panels are now in place.
- Did luminescence measurements.
Re 1-3 Drillers’ report:
Julien and Chantal prepared the GoPro camera. Grant and James prepared the cable termination and disassembled the AT section to make ready. The motor test on the tower exhibited the “normal” intermittent communication issues – Kevin continues the work him and Anders were working on in CPH. The GoPro went into the casing in the afternoon – revealing that we do have damage. We could see damage at the seam at 30 and 35m (blockage at 35). Further inspection of the 2025 footage revealed that there is also damage at the two following seams before the ice bridge.
Weather: Friday was mainly cloud and foggy with only a few sunny spells. Temp. from -14C to -6C. Wind 4-13kts, mainly from W and SW.
FL, Bo Vinther
