Drilling

Evan, Jason and Clement arrived at ACT10B to find the 50 m core at that site drilled. Camp had changed a lot since we left 2 weeks prior. Remnants of our snow walls were close to buried by the wind. That evening winds picked up ahead of our first storm on the ice sheet. We battened down the hatches and awaited for morning to see if we were able to proceed.




Calling home was some time a bit harrowing. The sat phone batteries do poorly in the cold. Often we called from a phone powered by a 50 lb battery in the back of a snowmobile. It was great to be able to talk to loved ones in such a remote place.


We awoke to good conditions, the storm had slowed and we got a free sunny day. We proceeded to ACT10-A and began to drill immediately. Temperatures we borderline too warm and we had to work quickly to keep the drill below the surface as much as possible. We drilled all 50 m in one day...its amazing what you can do when the drill has all its pieces!

The drill has two barrels, inner and outer. The outer barrel sits against the side walls and holds the drill in place. The inner barrel rotates along with the cutters and carries the cut chips up between the two barrels to be deposited in a cup at the top of the inner barrel.

The drill is lowered into the hole and approximately 1m of ice is drilled. Then when the drill is brought to the surface the inner barrel has to be removed so the ice core can be extracted and transferred to core processing


The drill is quite sophisticated and requires a "driver". Extracting perfect cores with changes ice conditions, temperatures, etc. is tricky business. All sorts of problems can arise. But Terry knows his stuff and drilling went very well.

The lengths, breaks and depths of each core are carefully logged. Since each core must be dated, it is important to avoid contaminating the cores. We wore special gloves and had a specific set of protocols before the cores were sealed into plastic bags, slipped into rigged tubes and placed in padded and insulated boxes.



We spent the night at ACT10-A before returning to ACT10-B. That morning the storm arrived and we had this view for the majority of the next few days. When driving in these conditions there is really no reason to look where you are going. Staring at the GPS, watch your speed and bearing is about all you can do.