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The classical Saturday night picture at the table in main dome.

June 27 and 28: “A French dinner, a Basler arriving and a stuck shallow drill”

Saturday it was blowing strongly and snow was drifting so outdoor work was limited. In the evening, we had an amazing 4-course French dinner prepared by Sune, HC, Maria and Nicholas. The main language spoken during dinner was French. However, a few details may have been lost in translation as we have no native French speaking participants, and in fact nobody speaking French at all. But the food, the spirit and the music were 100% Francophile. After dinner, the dome turned into a night club. Sunday evening, Sune gave a presentation about Greenland ice-core history and its relation to the cold war, passing the knowledge on to younger generations and newcomers.

 

The shallow drilling at the PFAS site had a challenging weekend, as the Danish shallow drill got seriously stuck at 30 m depth at the PFAS sampling site already Thursday night. Several attempts were made to free the drill using available tricks and tools, but nothing worked and weather prevented further experimentation during the weekend. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to bring up a drum of glycol from SFJ with the Basler that arrived at GRIP at 1 pm Sunday. A successful rescue operation was made Monday (to be continued).

 

What we did this weekend:

  1. Continued efforts to access the deep borehole
  2. Re-erected skiway flags after flight and storm
  3. Receiving Polar 6 with GEUS equipment and drum of glycol
  4. Prepared glycol-water mixture for shallow drill rescue
  5. Re-opened entrances to trenches after snow drift
  6. Blew Mega trench to 1.8m depth in the clean snow area and initiated sampling
  7. Main generator check
  8. Enjoyed 4-course dinner in French environment

 

Ad. 1:

Saturday: We have abandoned further attempts to smash the plug at 56m depth using all dead weights in camp and full speed, thus we dismounted the dead weight drill setup. Then, we attempted to drill a hole in the fiberglass plug with a Kovacs auger. This was not successful as during the previous days. We did not manage to shift the pieces aside, to create an opening in the centre of the plug. We also put the logger back together. In the afternoon, we adjusted WIFI on the camera for wireless connection, which unfortunately failed.

Sunday: Today we continued our efforts in fishing up fiberglass pieces from the current bottom of the bore hole. We managed to lift one piece up to the first broken seam (49m depth) and one more to the third seam (35m depth) before losing them. The seams consist of spirals of broken fiberglass over half a meter. This is a very tricky obstacle to pass through as our fiberglass fish hangs on a claw at the end of the hook. Additionally, the drillers prepared the necessary material for the recovery of the shallow drill, which included mixing of glycol, to melt the ice drill free.

 

Ad. 3: With the arrival of the Polar 6 we also welcomed the crew, Jim, Gill and Mimi back in camp. Camp population is now 24 persons.

 

Weather: Saturday, the high winds and snow drift continued until the evening where it calmed down and the blue sky re-appeared. Temp. from -24C to -12C. Sunday, temperatures were -13C to -18C and wind was 4-15 kt from E.

FL, Anders Svensson

The innovative Saturday night picture with everyone in the kitchen.
The ‘mad-cows-at-the-Summit’ version Saturday night picture with Pia seated on a lifted laundry machine. Nice weather, by the way, after two days of stormy conditions.
Fiberglass fishing in full swing. We catch a piece with a claw at the end of the drill and raise it cm by cm. At every broken casing joint with a spiral crack, we stop and re-orientate the piece. This is a very slow and tedious process.