Camp ingenuity

Bruce proudly presents the new generator tent exhaust system. The new system allows us to close the tent while the generators are running, making it more robust to wind and providing a great warm place for drying the drill-liquid-soaked suits and boots of the drillers.

The drilling and processing progress is stable, and cores of 1.7 – 2.1 meters are produced on a routine basis. There is really not much to report from the drill tent: The drill team is carefully drilling one core after the next, paying attention to the small details that reveal if the drill is performing at its best: sounds from the equipment, the amount of chips recovered, and the cutmarks on the core are monitored and adjustments are made where needed.
We produced 23.54 meters of core in 12 runs. Logged depth 263.12 m.

Johannes, Todd, and Emily drilled an 11 meter shallow core with the hand auger. We plan to drill an additional 4 more cores of this kind over the next two days. These cores help us investigate the inter-annual and spatial variability of snowfall, and will be valuable input to computer models describing the flow of ice in the RECAP area.

For a field camp like this, we bring tons of spare parts, but sometimes, things break down in new and unexpected ways. Today, Bruce and Todd constructed a new exhaust pipe system for our generator tent: They designed a way to feed the hot exhaust pipes through a tent canvas made of easy-to-melt plastic using plywood, a piece of drain pipe, a few hose clamps, and a metal panel from our kitchen sink that Sune had removed two weeks ago to put in an extra shelf. The result looks fancy and is – in our own humble opinion – a celebration of field camp ingenuity.

Weather: Light snow and dense clouds, clearing up from 5 am. From 8 pm to 11 am rather stable temperatures of -13°C to -10°C. Weak winds of a few m/s turning from N to W.


Best wishes,
Sune O. Rasmussen, RECAP FL