For our final drilling effort, I thought it best to camp at our moraine camp and make a 10 minute commute to the site for drilling, but there was considerable objection to this from our drillers, Terry and Bella. At the moment, all of our stuff was spread between six sites on the glacier, and managing this was becoming a considerable burden to Jason and I, and the thought of yet another move after this one, during the scramble of the take-out, was not pleasant. And as we would be here for several more months, we needed to consolidate and assess what else we needed brought in, as the early June take-out would be our only opportunity for this for some time. Our scientific productivity on parts of the project unrelated to drilling was also quite low, for similar reasons. But the idea of a commute, albeit only 10 minutes camp-to-borehole by snowmachine and in sight of our moraine camp, was strongly opposed to by our drillers, for a variety of reasons.

What was hurting our productivity and morale even more than having our stuff spread so widely, however, was the differences in philosophies and personalities between the ICDS drillers and the rest of us. Most drilling occurs on the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, where there are huge infrastructures in place to supply camps, food, etc and apparently there drillers basically just drill and have everything else done for them. Such habits and other personality issues created tension to the point that the primary force motivating Jason and Kristin’s planning each day was not science or logistics, but rather just getting out of camp before the drill crew woke up and staying away from camp until they got to work drilling, and in the meantime hoping I could find a way to permanently solve this problem. Since our move to our current camp when a number of these ‘differences’ in philosophy became clear, we discussed many times the idea of camping separately from them, but I knew that trying to implement this would form the basis of a new set of complaints and caustic comments that I would have to listen to for the rest of the trip, and this sort of negative energy is one thing I come out here to escape from, creating a dilemma for me. I still hung to the belief that in general they meant well, but after a conversation about all this with Terry and Bella, my last straw broke as too.

Fortunately the solution presented itself tidily during this final move. Perhaps they were having similar conversations on their own, but in any case Bella and Terry began advocating for their own separate camp next to the drill rig which they would setup and maintain on their own. They claimed to only want a very minimal camp set up and agreed if they did this they would take responsibility for camp management and safety. With the idea of splitting the camp now theirs and me objecting to it instead, I knew that they would freeze to death before complaining about this arrangement later in the trip and their perceived victory might actually keep them happy until the work was finished and I could get them on a plane. So I hesitantly agreed to their plan, and essentially everyone got what they wanted, albeit for different reasons than they likely thought.

To diffuse the tension as quickly as possible, I decided to get them to their new camp as quickly as possible and so moved them and their stuff first. The move day, the 20th, started out with crystal clear skies, but by early afternoon the camp we were moving from was in the fog. By the time we made the last gear shuttle to their camp, we were in a whiteout with fairly heavy snow. The conditions were bad enough that I could only see a few feet ahead of me and couldn’t even tell if I was going uphill or downhill at times. Fortunately the winds were light, else this would have become a truly desperate situation. Even so, given the possibility of winds picking up at any moment, we tried to move as quickly as possible and prioritize essential camp gear for our new camp. An issue associated with our move when carrying a heavy load it was a ten minute walk up through the moraine to get from the glacier to our camp site. So between the 4 mile snowmachine trip and the hike, there was only a limited amount of stuff we could get in place per unit time. By about 7PM we had shuttled several sled loads to the bottom of the hill, a number of shuttles to the camp site, and had a good start on setting it up the large cook tent, when we got a call from Bella on the radio. Clearly calling from the warmth of her sleeping bag, she asked if we were getting all settled in for the night and whether we needed any help. Cold, tired, and hungry, coated with snow and knowing we had a few hours work ahead of us before we could unpack our sleeping bags, we looked at each other and smiled, wishing Bella a good night and thanking her for her offer, happy in our decisions and looking forward to the rest of the trip with renewed anticipation.


Jason, Dyo and Darek head upglacier during the move, in the fog but before the blizzard started.


Me, taking a quick break from the snow in our newly-erected cook tent.

Today’s weather began like the yesterday’s, sunny and warm, but stayed that way throughout the night, allowing for a productive day. Darek helped prepare the cores for the final flight out, Dyo help move our food cache from the skiway to the base of the moraine camp, I shuttled loads and people between all of our caches in this consolidation process, Jason shuttled loads up the hill and did some more GPS surveying, and Kristin and Turner organized our new camp and made it comfortable. It was another long, exhausting day, but the sense of accomplishment and the prospects of the future sent us to bed content.


Darek climbs inside the freezer to prepare the final shipment of ice cores.


Kristin and Turner taking loads up the hill, getting lapped by Jason by frequently.


Jason did the lion’s share of hauling gear up the hill.


It’s only a 10 minute hike up the hill with a load, but after a morning of doing that, breaks are welcomed.