Will Mille be picked up tomorrow?

Lou and Sverrir help Mille to disassemble a dog sledge for air transportation. 

In the last week we have had visitors. Mille, who is Danish but lives in the U.S., will hopefully be picked up tomorrow. The three other members of the dogsledge expedition left NEEM a week ago, and tomorrow Mille and her 22 dogs and two sledges will be picked up. We hope that weather will behave so they can get home. It takes quite some logistical planning to arrange transport of live animals. Life in camp continues, and quite a few are learning many new things.

What we have done today:
1. Drilling and logging.
2. Setting up equipment in warm laboratories.
3. Making load plans for the dog sledge expedition.
4. Processing ice cores.
5. Repairing broken snow blower.
6. Troubleshooting the water vapour isotope machine at sampling site.
7. Cut snow from roof in connecting tunnel.
8. Installing LAN cable from main dome to science trench.
9. Routine power down of camp for 20 min. around 11.00 for oil change and service.

Ad.1: Drillers report:
A new pump was installed today. The pump body was deformed, likely in part due to damage from misalignment when inserting the hollow shaft into the outer tubes. This now retired pump served us well over 1700 meters of drilling. While the new pump was being mounted on the clean hollow shaft we did three filter runs in the borehole collecting 22 kg of chips.  It appears we are losing about 0.5 to 1 kg of chips per 3.5 meters of ice drilled. One test run with pressure tube 2 failed due to borehole electronic failure. One run with the new pump yielded 2.56 meters of core today.

Driller’s Depth 1797.92 meters. Logging Depth 1811.2 meters

Ad.5: A broken safety pin was replaced.

Ad.4: Processed 24 bags, last bag 3221, 1771.55 m.

Weather: blue sky or high thin clouds in the morning, later overcast and snow, -22°C  to - 13°C , 1-14 knots from E turning to WSW. Visibility: In the morning unrestricted, later down to ½ mile due to snow.

FL, J.P. Steffensen