2011-06-13

A strange visitor met with Andrew today

Due to the Saturday Night celebration yesterday night camp was today on a Sunday schedule. In the morning, the ice core processing passed the very significant 1259 AD eruption that was clearly seen both in DEP and ECM. The CFA lab has now finished measuring the discrete pit samples and will start working 24h on the main core. In the drill tent the shallow borehole was logged and found to be vertical within half a degree. This is ironic as the drillers explicitly for this bore hole have aimed at deviating from the vertical direction. Usually, the situation is the opposite: Drilling is aimed at a vertical hole but usually ends up with some degrees of inclination… Murphy’s Law appears to play a significant role here. As the drilling is already close to a depth of 280 m it is uncertain if the hole inclination can become sufficiently high before drilling terminates at 420 m depth. An inclination of the bore hole is necessary for testing diverting drilling later this season. The drillers are now concentrating on improving the core quality by changing the drill configuration (new cutters) for a test run tonight when temperatures have decreased.

What we have done today:
1. Logged perfectly vertical shallow borehole
2. Worked on shallow drill configuration
3. CFA analysis of discrete surface samples
4. NEEM S1 ice core processing: bag 330 – 365 (180.95 - 200.75 m)
5. Continued configuring the AWI radar system
6. Seismic station was re-leveled
7. Changed battery on Davis Weather station

Weather: Warm and sunny day. Temp. -4 °C to - 13 °C , 4 - 14 knots from S. Visibility unrestricted.

FL, Anders Svensson


Olivia enjoys the evening sun in the middle of nowhere