A major crew exchange

Friends leaving on an airplane

Over the last two days about 2/3 of the camp population has been exchanged by two flight missions. The exchange involves all camp functions including the cook, the doctor, drillers, ice core processors and the field leader. Many of our new participants are experiencing their first day on the Greenland ice cap, so there is much new to teach and learn during the coming days before camp will be back at full speed. Examples of important tasks to be achieved are how to use an outdoor hole-in-the-snow toilet, how to drive a skidoo, and how to sleep when the sun is shining 24h.

What we have done today:

1. Drilling with the NEEM long drill. Depth: 573.08 m.
2. No logging or processing today.
3. The CFA sulphate and pH analyses are now working. CFA depth: 79.75 m.
4. Receiving Skier 71.
5. Packed an ice core box pallet and unpacked received pallets.
6. Groomed away holes in skiway.
   

Ad.1: This is how the drillers report looks today:
"Today we recovered 6.9 m of core in two runs finishing at a depth of 573.08 m. The first run confirmed that the pump continued to operate well after changing the bronze cam rollers that had became worn and deformed during normal use. We farewelled our senior drillers Sigfus (Master Driller) and Nobby (Master Drill Fluids Engineer) as well as Hans Christian and Sebastian. Welcome to new drillers; Frank, Olivier, Philippe, Fernando, Mads and Song-Bum to the drill trench and we began training with the second successful run of the day."

Ad.3: During his last 12 hours in camp Matthias Bigler managed to make the CFA sulphate analysis function. All 10 CFA chemical analytical channels are thus fully operative.

Ad.4+5: 20 new NEEM participants arrived and 22 participants departed. Current camp population is 31. We packed an ice core box pallet with 35 ice core boxes that left for the freezer in SFJ. Skier 71 left camp using only half the skiway in first attempt without use of ATOs.

Weather: Sunshine and thin high cloud cover all day. Temperatures ranging from -16°C to -10°C. Wind 12 knots from S along the skiway until late afternoon when dropped to 4 knots.

Field leader, Anders Svensson