Experiments and breaks in cores

Jakob straightening the casing tube for the fast access miniature drilling experiment

Jakob has brought a setup for fast access miniature drilling to be tested in camp. Today he made a first attempt to mount a tube as casing in one of the 75 meter deep shallow holes that were drilled for firn gas sampling a few weeks ago. The casing needs to be melted into the ice at 75 m depth in order to make a tight connection between the deep hole and surface. We are following the project with excitement.

At 10 in the evening (that is at 10 am Monday morning) everybody in camp had gone to sleep as we were rather tired after working at night and receiving airplanes during the day. Sarah made us a great dinner!

In the drill tent beautiful 2m cores are produced one after the other and logging is now at 400.60 m.

The cutting of the cores in 55 cm pieces is currently causing some troubles as the dedicated saw for that purpose is not functioning, and the current setup tends to create unintended breaks in the cores. A run has been left over night in our freezer in the hope that the ice will relax and not break when cut.

Tomorrow we will also test a circular saw we have borrowed from Constable Point.

Weather: Overcast and light snowfall. Temperatures between -6°C and -14°C. Wind up to 7 m/s from N.