Drilling the Ice Core

On Saturday June 3, 2006, we started drilling a 100 meter ice core to replace the one from last year that melted. We are drilling the ice core in approximately the same spot about 5.5 km north of camp. Two drillers run the drill. The drill goes into the hole and pulls out an approximately 1 meter ice core. It is not actually ice is more like really compacted snow. Once the core is drilled it is brought up and the core barrel is taken out. The core is pushed out onto a table. This is where I help. Once the core is out, it is measured and put into a plastic bag. I label the bag with the name, tube number, and depths. Example name: JEMS 2 Tube number: 3 depth: 2.12 m-3.17m. I also label this on a core tube, which looks a lot like a map tube or fly fishing rod holder only it is 4 inches in diameter and about 1.4 meters long. The core is then placed in the shade until 6 tubes are completed. Once 6 are completed, the 6 tubes are put in ice core boxes, basically these are cardboard coolers that are long and narrow to fit the cores. These are loaded on sleds and taken back to camp.










When hauling the ice cores on sleds the ski doo must go very slow so as to not break the cores. When we get to camp snow is dropped on top of the boxes to keep them cold until they are put on a palate and loaded into the C-130 for the ride home. The cores will not come back until mid July.

On our first day of drilling we drilled to 25 meters. Today we are drilling again. I worked at the drill site in the morning and am taking the afternoon to rest. When I left after lunch we were down to 38 meters. They will drill to 50 meters or so today, approximately half done.

The drillers were nice enough to let me run the drill. I drilled 102 cm of core from 24 to 25 meters deep in the ice sheet. This corresponds to snow from about 1980. Today they are drilling through WWII. Apparently two melt layers are seen right about WWII. Very interesting, did we bomb Summit? Why did the snow melt? They have seen these melt layers in all of the cores taken around this area so it was a wide spread melt. Interesting to think about.