Camp is on a bit of a funny schedule, with half the folks working at night and the rest during the day. It feels like the issue we face all the time in Alaska, with considering the 4 hour time difference in the east coast. So we leave notes for each other to read when we wake up. This morning we got a note saying that the drill had hit a rock at 70 m and it could not get past it to drill the remaining 60 meters or so of ice. Most drills working on ice are not designed to penetrate rock, and this is certainly the case with the two types of drills we have here. For holes 2 and 3, our main scientific interest is just the hole itself, so that we can install a thermistor string into it to measure temperature. In my initial request for support (and several times afterwards), I had recommended the use of a hot water drill here, which makes holes simply by spraying hot water into the hole and melting the ice. The main advantage is that it is much faster to make a hole (only takes a day once the drill is setup), meaning that if you hit a rock you don’t have spend a week on night-shift drilling another hole only to hit another rock. A secondary advantage is that one needs to create a hot tub to store the water being pumped, and this tub has other uses as well. But we have to make the best use of the equipment we have, and moving the drill a few meters over and starting again is basically our only option.


The damaged cutters at the end of the core barrel.


Detail of one of the cutters. Ouch!

In any case, it was a another beautiful sunny day, so we planned our work accordingly. Kristin, Turner and I headed to the old hut on the moraine across from our current camp for some high resolution panoramic photography. Jason headed back up glacier to troubleshoot our ongoing GPS problems, which are exacerbated by not being able to camp next to the base station. I found a nice spot on the moraine and spent several hours taking a panoramas at a variety of resolutions. The hut was in even more in verge of collapse than last time I saw it, as its ‘foundation’ continues to shift and crack on the ice cored moraine it sits on. Probably this summer we will need to knock it down before someone is tempted to sleep in there and get crushed.


The hut has seen better days. This 1970’s version sits on top of a platform installed in 1957.

The drill crew had woken up by now and decided to spend the afternoon exploring as well. Darek and Bella hiked down to Bur Cirque, Terry wandered around the ice and visited the hut, and Ryo caught up on sleep and reading. By dinner time we were all back in camp and made a plan to begin moving the drill a few meters away and starting over. Given our limited amount of time, hitting another rock means that there will not be enough time left to try a third time here and succeed at our final location in the lower cirque. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed for good weather and clean, dry ice.


Kristin and Turner watch Bella and Darek hike downglacier to Bur Cirque. For the end of winter, there sure is lots of bare ice exposed.