After lunch, the Basler left with the shallow drill and the ICELINK group to drill a shallow ice core at a site known as Site D, some 200 km south of GRIP. Back in 1984, an ice core was drilled at this location and by drilling to 30 m depth at the same site today, the two ice-core profiles can be stitched together to obtain a climate record that covers the industrialisation. High gain from relatively little effort. The drilling reached 45.27 m depth and the Basler came back to camp at 4:30 in the morning.
The deep drillers are reporting: ‘Today we deployed the 50cm-long auger with a camera mounted slightly above to get a live feed. We stirred a few pieces around, but could not penetrate the blockage at 56m. Then we deployed a 51mm hole saw on the bottom of the drill. This was a success and we managed to drill a hole in one of the fiberglass shards. After this, we used the auger again to stir all the pieces around in the bottom in the hope to access through the blockage, which did not work. We then used a 35mm hole saw and managed to drill into, but not through, the blockage. With all the setbacks over the last weeks, this felt like a step forward in the right direction.’
Tim and Magnus are continuing to turn the surroundings into an alpine landscape forming ‘winter hills’ for storage of sledges. Five hills have appeared north of camp and Tim may just have created the highest point on the Inland ice today. Anton has been busy mounting small geophones all along the Skiway (next to skiway flags) to record the seismic waves created by the touchdown of the Basler. The geophones will be removed again.
What we did this Wednesday:
- The deep drilling had success to drill into the plug in the borehole
- Polar 6 departed for Site D and drilled to 45.27m depth
- Continued pushing snow for winter berms
- Moved food and stuff into large storage trench
- Started constructing balloon entrance to large storage trench
- The mega trench was sampled. 10 out of 13 profiles done in upper layer
- Geophones were placed along the entire skiway
Ad. 2: The Site D 2026 core is drilled at: N 70.628924 W 39.620811 Elev: 3007 m
Weather: Calm and sunny day, but overcast after 9 pm. Wind 0-6 kt from SE, temp -22C to -10C.
