A Busy Camp

The night shift in the CFA hut. The night shift is from 20:00 to 08:00 and coffee, cake and chokolade is found in big amounts.

The NEEM camp is a busy camp with drilling from 08:00 in the morning until 24:00 in the night and CFA and logging 24 hours a day. At most meals 8 of the 36 in camp are on shifts and eat at other times.

The CFA is a very time consuming line. A square strip of ice with the side length 3.5 cm is melted and the melt water used to measure 14 chemical components, 3 parameters related to the dust particles, the methane concentration and the stable water isotopes. The night shift works from 20:00 at night to 08:00 in the morning and are well stocked with coffee, cakes and chocolate.

The camp celebrated the French Bastille day with red wine and good cheeses after dinner and at the time I am writing this daily report the French music is still playing down stairs.

What we have done today:

1.Drilling with the NEEM long drill: 33.29 m. Drillers depth: 1132.63 m 2. Logging 32.83 m of core. Logging depth 779.20 m
3. CFA analysis: 23.10 m. Depth: 373.45 m.
4. Building shelves in the main dome for boots and parca coat
5.Shallow drilling at the air-firn village. Present depth 8 m. Ice core logged and packed and gas pumping equipment prepared.
6. Moving fuel tanks on the surface so a full tank is brought close to the generator hut.
7. Flattening the main camp area with the Pisten Bully

Ad.1: Driller’s Report July 13, 2009:
“All was left exactly the same as yesterday and the performance and production was similar.  Stable drilling throughout the day produced about 33meters over ten runs.  The inclination is steady at 1.95 degrees.  The shallow drill is fully assembled and operational and produced the first 8 meters of ice for the firn gas program. “

Ad. 2. The logging is lagging far behind the drilling due to the time the cores need to relax before being logged.  Now when we are nearing the end of the brittle zone the logging will happen in 24 hour shifts to be able to catch up with the drillers.

Weather: A slightly windy day (up to 15 kn) with mostly sun shine. After dinner it became overcast and the temperature increased from -8°C to
-3°C. The coldest nigh temperature was -14°C.

FL, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

Celebration of the French Bastille Day with red wine and good humor. At present we have 7 French in camp