The camp world from above. Left to right: Swiss drilling camp, green tent, fuel tank, generator in white box, white storage tent in the back, red tents are mechanics and carpenters garages, in front ‘the living room’ with sofas, Main Dome, in the right back personal tents, surface science tents and satellite receiver, to the far right the entrance to the trenches.

Plane received and a difficult day for deep drilling and firn gas project

Today was an unfortunate day for the deep drilling as an about 1 m long section of a core was lost by the drill. With careful depth logging and stratigraphic linking to other ice cores, we will be able to reconstruct exactly how much ice has been lost, but the ice core will lack information of some 10 years about 4000 years ago. The firn gas site also had a hard time as the bladder got stuck in the hole at some 40 m depth last night. Glycol was added to the hole but unfortunately the bladder is still stuck at the time of writing.
Camp received Skier 42 with passengers and pallets. The skier was on snow for 75 min, it gave us fuel, took our retro-cargo, and took off in first attempt using 2/3 skiway without the use of rockets (ATOs). We said goodbye to Carlo, Sepp, Sverrir, Anne-Katrine, Nanna, Nicolai, Christian, Kerim, Zhang Qi, and Kévin plus the WindSled team. We welcomed Steffen, Gonzalo, Ina, Diana, and Abigail, plus 5 visitors that will stay for a few days only. Three DVs were given a tour of the camp.

What we did today:

1. Received Skier 42
2. Deep drilling core length: 7.23 m.
3. Logging depth: 471.62 m.
4. Water isotopes depth: 345.68 m.
5. Firn gas sampling on hold
6. Initiated packing down swiss camp
7. Water vapour, methane, aerosols, snow and boundary layer measurements
8. Groomed skiway to remove undulations in NE end and prepare for next flight
9. Prepared ice core box pallet

Weather: Blue sky with few scattered high clouds all day. Temperature -9 °C to -20 °C. Wind 2-10 kt from SW. Excellent weather for receiving skier.

FL, Anders Svensson