Outdoor Saturday celebration
Material from below the ice sheet as retrieved by the rock drill today. Dimensions of the image are approximately 20 x 6 cm2. The material appears to be a mixture of greyish silt/sand and ice. The sample is frozen and covered with drill liquid.
Yesterday Steff and Trevor mounted the rock drill and this morning they made several attempts of drilling in the basal material at first without success.Two different drill heads were mounted and one heavy extension rod was attached to the drill in order to make it heavier, but for each run the pump appeared to clog with ice. Finally a run made without the pump mounted resulted in a few centimeters of sample with silt-like material confirming that bedrock has been reached. Who knows when this material last time saw daylight?
The snow pit has been extended to 5.5 m depth by Andrea and Niccoló.
In the evening Jakob prepared a Swiss cheese Fondue prepared on a home build Alcogel stove made of a beer can and a tin. This proved the old Swiss saying: figugegl.
Just after dinner the sun came out and after a week of overcast and snow we had the third outdoor Saturday night in a row!
Weather: Clouds, wind, and snowfall during the day, but at night the sky turned blue. Temperatures -5°C to -10°C, wind dropping from 5 to 2 m/s turning from N to NE.
The rock drill head with basal material frozen on to it.
Swiss made Alcogel burner for Fondue.
Saturday night in front of the kitchen tent. It was so nice to see the sun again after a week of overcast and snowfall.
Renland FL, Anders
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