Highlights from the week 2
Week 2 blogs:
- Thursday, 9th May: Getting to the ‘core’ of our trip
- Tuesday, 14th May: ‘Bucket baths’, the ‘Tomato’ and the ice caverns
- Wednesday, 15th May: Ice core drilling finally commences
Useful links:
- Photos from Greenland
- Blog from Rochester Laboratory: http://rochestericelab.wordpress.com/
- Real time webcam from Summit Camp in Greenland
- Visit our special micro site for more information on the expedition
- Read the week 1 blog
- Read the week 3 blog
- Read the week 4 blog
Thursday, 9th May: Getting to the ‘core’ of our trip
We met at 08:00 to hear the briefing and to discuss plans for the day. Six (Vas, Jon, Mike, Ben, Tanner & Lindsay) travelled out to camp, again in two skidoos with sleds and the Tucker, taking the DNF and other items. Three (Lou, Christo & Andrew) stayed behind to discuss the core drilling and logging strategy and to prepare the layflat plastic tubing for the ice cores, the core labels and the core logs.
It is really important to get this right now and for everyone to understand how it is to be done. It can get surprisingly tricky: the drillers aim for a particular core length, but may get nothing or core that is longer or shorter than desired. The ends are not necessarily square. The core can be broken. The bagged lengths must match the transport boxes for optimal packing. Core sections less than 20 cm cannot be used in continuous flow melting analysis systems.
The depths and lengths from the drill itself may not match the recorded lengths due to the cable stretching or to cumulative errors in matching the sections. You get the idea. It is of course critical to get it right if the subsequent analysis is to be worthwhile.
The camp party returned in time for lunch then prepared for another run to camp while the three of us remained behind to finish our tasks… 260 layflat bags and labels with logging sheets to match. Paperwork also had to be prepared for shipping the ice core boxes from Greenland to Australia and to the USA. During the afternoon there were two C130 flights from Kangerlussuaq carrying cargo, including my ice core boxes, but no passengers.
After dinner Christo and Lou made the trip to camp by skidoo and I remained behind for the evening. I will travel to camp tomorrow with the rest of the cargo and the Science Laboratory.
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| The camp site during a blizzard |
Tuesday, 14th May: ‘Bucket baths’, the ‘Tomato’ and the ice caverns
On Monday morning conditions were relatively good, with low winds, moderate temperatures (~ -20 °C) and good visibility.
It was nice not to have winds for a while! Everyone had noticed that the temperature dropped considerably around midnight on Sunday; I noticed amazing dendritic ice patterns forming over the surface of my iPad screen as I was reading in bed… even without breathing on it. As the night wore on, it warmed up and the wind dropped.
In the morning, I decided it was time for a wash and some fresh clothes. I had a ‘bucket bath’ in the Weather Port with a flannel and ~ 10 L of warm water and even managed to wash my hair. It felt great, but did surprise some of my fellow campers! Next time I might do it in the relative privacy of the large Arctic Oven supply tent.
As there was still a lot of work to be done in the Science Lab setting up and calibrating equipment the drillers were unable to start work on Monday, so they concentrated on getting the large diameter BID drill ready for testing. I spent a lot of the day with Lindsay getting my ice core boxes ready to receive samples. The first task was to move my 18 boxes (24 gel packs per box) of eutectic gel packs into the ice cave.
This is a sloping trench of 20 m length and 2 m width, 0.5 m high at the opening and 3 m high at the far end which was melted into the firn.
Wooden beams support plywood sheets on the roof which are now well and truly covered in snow. At the deep end there are caverns excavated on each side of ~ 3x3x3 m, fitted with insulating foam doors. It is in these two caverns we will be storing our boxes of ice cores until they can be shipped back to Summit and then to Kangerlussuaq. We removed a plywood sheet at one end of the ice cave and entered another world: quiet and tranquil, with blue light filtering through the firn.
We stashed the gel packs and carefully sealed it again as the drifting snow finds its way through even the smallest hole and will gradually fill up such spaces.
The next task was to get the Tomato organised so that we could prepare the boxes inside where it was warmed by an electric heater powered by a 2 kVA generator. We spread out the vinyl ice core box covers to warm as they were very stiff and inflexible at the ambient temperature. Once ready, Lindsay and I undid the cargo straps holding the boxes down on a pallet, now partially buried in drifting snow, and moved them inside the tomato to warm.
By this stage the weather had started to worsen. Using a heat gun, we warmed the vinyl covers so that they could be fitted to the boxes, and wiped the vinyl with alcohol soaked tissues so that the adhesive would stick. Next we attached the shipping information and quarantine import permits in a Ziploc bag and ‘fragile, this way up’ and ‘keep frozen’ stickers, firstly warming the vinyl with the heat gun to ensure good adhesion. We managed to complete 6 boxes before it was time for dinner.
After dinner some of us watched a few episodes of ‘Miniscule’ on my PC in the Weather Port.
Then it was time to retire to bed. The ritual goes something like this:
- Fill a water bottle with boiling water.
- Put on the external layer to go outside. Outside, I have typically been wearing a summer singlet and underpants, a pair of upper and lower Merino skins (‘long johns’), a fleece top and trousers, a polar fleece jacket, a down jacket, a thick balaclava and goggles, inner and outer gloves, waterproof over pants, thick woollen socks and glacier boots.
- Make the trip through the driving wind and snow then dig away the snow to get inside the tent, making sure that the Pee bottle is empty.
- Once inside, take off the down jacket and gloves and put the hot water bottle inside a large sock and place it inside the sleeping bag liner at the bottom of the sleeping bag.
- Next, remove the glacier boots so that the over pants can be taken off. Take off the day socks and put on the woollen sleeping socks.
- Make sure iPad, pee bottle, woollen hat and inner gloves are handy.
- Have a pee. Put pee bottle inside an empty boot to try and stop it freezing. Get inside the sleeping bag, still wearing underclothing, long johns and outer fleece layer. Put on woollen hat and inner gloves if reading.
- On retiring, hat and gloves off, climb deep inside the bag and pull the draw cords so that there is just a small aperture to breathe through.
- Try and ignore the constant wind flapping the tent and the snow driving against the tent walls. Wake up every hour or two to change position or to have a pee.
In the morning, reverse the procedure. Hang the sleeping bag from the hook in the centre of the tent roof in the hope that the ice that formed on the outside of the bag around your head will sublime during the day.
Make very sure that the pee bottle is emptied else it will freeze solid and you will have big problems the next night. Also make sure the hot water bottle is either emptied or taken to a warm place.
On Tuesday morning I woke late at 09:30 to find everyone had finished breakfast and had left the Weather Port. The weather had worsened and the forecast was for it to get much worse during the day and into tomorrow. Jon and Christo’s pit had been abandoned and was mostly filled by drifting snow. After breakfast, Lindsay and I
resumed our work with the boxes and we had finished the 11th by lunchtime.
By then, the wind was an estimated 35-40 knots and the temperature -30 °C or lower. Visibility was extremely poor and conditions were very dangerous: with the wind chill factor -60 °C or below there was a good chance of frost bite or frost nip and the visibility was so poor it would be easy to lose your bearings.
With Jon’s help we emptied the 12th box of snow pit samples into box number 1 which was prepared for shipping. We packed it with gel packs and snow with a layer of superfoil around the outside. One box of samples ready to go! Then we took the empty box inside and prepared it for shipping inside its vinyl cover. Now all I need is the ice cores to go inside.
I retired to the warm Science Lab to update this diary. Vas, Ben and Christo we busy taking the first air samples of surface air. After moving the bladder back against the lab, having dug the tubing out from under ~ 15 cm of snow it was 19:00 and time for dinner. I’m out of here!
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| A photo of the Tomato |
Wednesday, 15th May: Ice core drilling finally commences
To our surprise, we awoke to a windless day, although slightly overcast. We moved the first box containing snow pit samples into the ice cave and took enough gel packs out to pack the second box.
During the morning, Grey arrived by skidoo from Station, bringing some equipment with him along with his tool kit. He fiddled with the Kumar and improved its performance to the point that ice inside the Weather Port began to melt.
He also modified the wooden boxes the generators were shipped in so that the generators could work inside them, hopefully making them less affected by snow drift.
By lunchtime the gas samplers were ready with their equipment and the drilling finally commenced. The drillers, Lou, Tanner and Mike are using a Canadian Eclipse drill that takes a core of about 7.5 cm diameter.
For the upper part of the core they are using a tapered collet system to grab and break the core before raising it to the surface; as they go deeper they will change to core dogs. We are aiming for ~ 1m sections and we will pack 10 m of core per box, along with gel packs, filling in the void spaces with snow.
The first sections of core are always the most fragile and difficult to handle so we started fairly slowly, gradually getting into a routine.
At ~ 6.4m below the surface the firn air sampling device was dropped into the hole for the first time, using a winch on a tripod. Over the next few hours the first gas samples were taken! I headed down to the Weather Port at 17:30 as it was my turn to cook: chicken and black bean sauce, (frozen) vegetables in garlic and ginger and basmati rice. At 19:30 we had a much-needed meal.
Vas made satellite phone call home as it was his daughter Lilia’s first birthday and we all sang ‘happy birthday’, which probably scared the living daylights out of her!
Then John brought out the surprise birthday cake he and Lindsay had made, along with a candle. For a change it was a windless evening with blue skies which we all enjoyed. All up, a good day was had by all.
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| In this photo (from L to R): the Eclipse ice core drill and a close-up of an ice core drill |
Published: 15/05/2013