A broken drill? No, German drill innovation. The German intermediate drill is being tested in camp. Instead of a tilting tower, the lower part of the drill itself can be tilted to horizontal position for core extraction.

New people and new activities

The deep drill was in operation morning and evening, whereas the borehole was logged in the afternoon. Ice quality is good, but the brittle zone is approaching. The loggers tested ‘netting’ of ice core that may become a useful technique to avoid ice core pieces popping off brittle ice cores.

Chris has been on the skiway all day to prepare for a flight scheduled for Sunday, and to remove some disturbing rollers in the North-Eastern end of Skiway. Jason Box did maintenance of weather stations, and Alun Hubbard made attempts of flying a drone for validation of satellite measurements. There was testing of the German intermediate drill, and packing at the Swiss site. Unfortunately, the bladder stuck at the firn gas borehole could not be recovered today.

All the food we received yesterday was stored in the cook’s tent. In the evening Pavel Talalay gave a presentation about quite impressive ongoing and planned Chinese ice-core drilling activities in Antarctica. Pavel is head of the Polar Research Center at Jilin University, China.

What we did today:

1. Deep drilling core length: 6.57 m.
2. Logging depth: 478.19 m.
3. Water isotopes depth: 350.35 m
4. Firn gas sampling has terminated
5. Packing down at Swiss camp
6. Testing and drilling with German intermediate drill
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. Unpacked and stored food received food
10. Maintenance of weather stations
11. Flying with Welsh drone

Weather: Blue sky with few high scattered clouds all day. Temperature -8°C to -20°C. Wind 5-8 kt from W and SW.

FL, Anders Svensson

A netted ice core in the logger cabin