Camp in full swing

The red logging weatherport next to the white weatherport that covers the entrance to the trenches. In front of the red weatherport a red steel tube can be seen. This is a hole in the roof of the drilling trench right over the borehole.

Now things begin to happen. The drillers made good progress today, albeit with various complications, and the processers began processing the brittle core. The processers “only” made 6.6 m; but it is a good start and since several are new to the job, we expect the learning curve to be steep.

The CFA people are almost there in setting up the most comprehensive analytical system ever brought to the field.

As forecasts have warned of strong wind the next couple of days much work was also done on the surface. A pit study was conducted, a weatherport was erected over the U.S. logging equipment and the camp and cargo line were cleaned and revised.

What we have done today:

1. Drilling and logging. Now in two shifts.
2. Processing NEEM deep core brittle zone, bags 1869-1881 (1027.40m – 1034.55m).
3. Erecting weatherport over U.S. logging winch, and cased the snow hole over the drill trench
   with a ventilation tube.
4. All CFA systems almost ready. We may begin CFA measurements tomorrow.
5. Building empty drum pallet.
6. Cleaned up in the cargo line, lifting cargo up to surface.
7. German and Danish pit study at 2009 S2 drill site (3 km South of camp).

Drillers report: We started our shift work with Trevor and Michelle in the
morning and Darcy and Andrew in the evenings.  We have had great support
from Vasileios and Tyler with the core logging. 

Packing around the top of the dry drill head continues to give some problems, but we persevered and have had a productive day reaching 70.90  meters with a production today of 31 m. 

Some scary core breaks (or “non” core breaks as they could be) often required multiple pulls to free the drill.  We used the superbanger as it was designed once to free the drill with success.  The second attempt to use the superbanger to free the drill resulted in leaving the core barrel down, which we later retrieved relatively easily and eventually the core that had been drilled.

Limiting the runs to about 1.1 – 1.2 meters seems to help the situation with chips severely packing above the head.  Still, we have coarse enough chips and good recovery in the chips chamber. 

Despite hard breaks, the cores themselves are beautiful so far.  Strangely enough, though, we look forward to switching to a wet drilling mode.

Weather: In the morning overcast and light snow showers, later clear.
Temp. - 12 °C to - 21 °C , 4-10 knots from N, later ESE. Visibility 1 mile in the morning during snow showers, later unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen