Daily reports from the NGRIP-camp - week 29, 2003

Monday, July 14th
Daily life
27 "distinguished visitors" and media people will visit the camp on wednesday and the preparations are beginning. The doctor was the camps cook today.
Science
5 cores were drilled today with a total length of 3.92 m. Unfortunately things weren't straight forward today. In one run the EWS bomb failed to break, in another run a filter slipped, and in a third run the core wouldn't break for a while although max force was being put on the winch. The problem with the breaking of the cores is probably related to the very large crystals (5-10 cm in the ice). All runs produced large amounts of slush and chips.
In a joined effort almost 10 m of core were processed and packed today. The values in the electrical conductivity measurement are still increasing, it certainly looks like eemian ice.
Logistics
The skiway was groomed again to prepare for the very early wednesday and thursday mornings flights. The old drill trench is being cleaned up, and cables were sorted, in order to start sending things out of the camp this week.

Tuesday, July 15th
Daily life
The day today was mainly used for preparing the two flights this week, 27 visitors are supposed to arrive, and 21 people will leave camp. It's been blue sky but cold, and some fog during night.
Science
Five cores were drilled today with a total length of 4.65 m. The drilling depth is now 3079.01 m and many of the bedrock bets have already been passed!
The best core length still seemes to be around 1 m, and some of the breaks are still very high.
More ice cores were logged, processed and packed. The electric conductivity signal (ECM) remains high.
Logistics
The camp has been prepared for the skiers. Everything was cleaned, cargo was packed, flags on skiway were shaken to remove snow, and the "airport" was openend, BUT one hour before take-off the flight was cancelled due to bad weather in Kangerlussuaq! Although Kangerlussuaq airport usually has quite stable weather, this is just the way it is working on the ice, the weather can change everything very quickly. The visitors stay in Kangerlussuaq for the moment and hope for better weather tomorrow.

Wednesday, July 16th
Daily life
It's been a busy day at NGRIP with many visitors and two planes, one during the day, and the second after midnight. The wind and clouds picked up during the day, and the plane landed in drifting snow. The warm surface and the drifts made the take off very hard, and all cargo had to be dropped. The crew at NGRIP would like to thank the visitors for a very nice day.
Science
Five cores were drilled today, and the drilldepth is now 3083.07 m. No sign of bedrock yet. The last core was a nice long core of about 1.60 m. Five cameras were following one of the drillings, unfortunately a short one of 0.50 m. Appearently one drillhead is performing better than the other, and it was decided only to use the better one. Further cores were logged, processed and packed.
Logistics
With the very warm snow the first plan had left 50 cm deep tracks in the skiway when it turned before taking off. More grooming was needed before the second plane arrived.

Thursday, July 17th
Daily life
The evening was spent celebrating bedrock!
In the early morning Thursday the second plane arrived bringing two further guests. It left again at 5:15 a.m. with all the visitors from yesterday. Unfortunately weather conditions were really bad and the plane only got airborn after several attempts and again without cargo.
Science
At 18.15 pm local time bedrock was reached today at a depth of 3084.99m! The drill came up covered in mud, which means that melting is taking place at the bottom and meltwater is now getting into the borehole.

A long explanation directly from the camp of what happened follows here:

The first core drilled this morning was 100% normal and the core was 1.17 cm long. The break was normal and ice crystals can be seen in the break. The core was difficult to get out of the inner core barrel - we believe now there was frozen water between ice and barrel. In the next run the drill was lowered to 50cm above bottom. At this point it was noticed that the load only was 485kg and the drill was pulled up until the load was 530kg. F4 was pressed to start rotation but it did not happen. We noticed there was a short and the drilled was pulled slightly up. The load kept raising to 650 kg as if it was an easy break and all the way up the load was appr. 50 kg higher than normal. When the drill came out of the hole 12 m of the cable and the antitorque was covered with frozen water and a black spot was noticed where a short had occured. Bottles of champagne were opened and everybody in camp was called to the trench. Opening the floor revealed 30 cm of light brown frozen water hanging from the drill. Now it was clear that we had hit the bottom. The brown ice has a diameter comparable to the drill but channels have formed on the surface of the ice following the angles of the drill head. The big diameter of the frozen ice explains the higher load while pulling up. We have carefully supported the light brown frozen water and left the drill in horizontal position. It is not known how much frozen water we have in the inner core barel at the moment or if we have recovered the little bottom ice there must have been causing the break in the previous core. After having visitors tomorrow to celebrate and enjoy with us we will carefully discuss how to recover the frozen water below the drill head and in the inner core barrel. We believe that water has raised 20m in the borehole between the two last runs since we have ice on 20m of the cable/drill and the short occured the very first time we attempted to rotate the drill. The ice hanging from the drill head is light brown while the frozen water on cable and rest of drill is clear. In the coming days we will discuss if it is possible to lower the drill again and get more of the frozen water to the surface. Perhaps it is possible to core the 20m of water if it freezes to ice.

Logistics
A third plane this week may come in tomorrow to pick up cargo, and bring visitors from the Kangerlussuaq office to celebrate the bedrock.

Friday, July 18th
Daily life
Yet another plane visited the camp for a couple of hours. Thereby, 14 guests had a chance to admire the bottom ice. This time, the full retrocargo went out of camp as anticipated. 'The Bedrock Cafe' is now officially named with a sign. The lunch with visitors was held here.
Science
It's being considered how to recover the frozen water from the drill.
Logistics

Saturday, July 19th
Daily life
Saturday night ... a party dinner is prepared by many cooks. The menu is a local speciality: 'Luck, love and money' pizzas accompanied by rice taffel and followed by ice looking like champagne sorbet and fruit salat. At midnight the dansing started and at 01 the Champagne was served. As there are currently 7 girls and 6 boys in camp there is no excuse not to dance.
Science
It was decided to saw off the refrozen water below the drill and thereby keep it frozen. The ice inside the drill has to be heated in order to loosen from the drill, but the melt water is collected. It showed up that the drill contained about 10 kg of refrozen water, of which most is conserved as ice.
Before the buttom was hit, the liquid level in the bore hole was 134 m below surface. Today the liquid level is measured to be only 96 m below surface. It is concluded that most likely about 38 m of water has enteredthe hole from below.
The last core is logged and the final official length of the core is determined to be 3085.00 m
Logistics

Sunday, July 20th
Daily life

Science
The processing of the core continues and 3070 m depth is reached. The ECM-signal is the highest measured so far in the deep ice (meaning that one is down in originally warm ice - Eem ice). At this depth the ice is made up of individual crystals with sizes up to 50 cm diameter! (This should be compared to usual size of up to a couple of cms). The extremely large crystals are due to the temperature close to the melting point at this depth.

The liquid level in the bore hole has increased to 87 m. Apparently, water is still entering the hole at the bottom. Calculations show that it will take the water at the bottom about 23 days to freeze. Therefore, sampling of bottom water by ice coring with not be possible this season.

The seismic station, which is burried in the snow outside of camp, is being checked. More than 2500 events have been registered over the last months.
Logistics
The packing down of camp is ongoing. Today, part of the drill equipment is taken down.

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