A pig in camp

Bruce and Trevor are “feeding the pig”. The “pig” is an oil drum with a hole in the top and heaters and insulation strapped around its waist. It is used to melt the chips from the drilling. Because of the density difference between water and drill liquid and because the drill liquid is hydrophobic, the water and drill liquid separates inside the pig, and the drill liquid can be reclaimed and used again.

As always, we started late Sunday morning, but drilling quickly got well underway, and we produced more than 17 meters of core in 9 runs. Logged depth 239.58 m. Core quality remains excellent.

We had initially planned to work in two shifts of two drillers and two core processors, but have found that it works well to work long days where people take turns and can get breaks when they feel cold or otherwise need a pause.

This also leaves time for other small duties to be fitted into the workday. It also means that most people are well worn out at the end of the day, and after dinner, most people quickly go to bed.

Today, we closed the firn gas “satellite camp”, and Johannes worked on his pit studies. By digging pits and studying how the thickness of the individual snow layers vary, we will learn more about the snow accumulation conditions, which will help us understand the climatic signal in the ice cores. Over the last days, Johannes has dug 3 pits of 2.2 meters’ depth and sampled 6 profiles. The pits are separated by 10 and 50 meters, respectively, to give an idea about the spatial variability of accumulation.

After being sampled, one of the pits was enlarged to act as temporary ice cores storage pit. The drilling is going so well that we will likely run out of storage space in the freezer a few days before we are able to fly ice cores out of camp. We will therefore need to store about 10 boxes of ice cores in the pit, covered with plywood, tarps, and snow to keep them out of the sun and relatively cold.

Weather: In the beginning of the day, we have had scattered clouds with patches of blue sky, but during the day, the cloud cover got more dense and it started to snow. Winds from NE 3-5 m/s. Minimum temperature around -12°C.



Best, Sune O. Rasmussen, FL