You are currently viewing May 8: Continue Searching for the Borehole Casing
Tamara and Adam extending the snow pit. Outside the pit GPS measurements are conducted. The green flag mark the coordinates of the 1992 borehole position.

May 8: Continue Searching for the Borehole Casing

Today our team grew with Adam from Summit Station joining us out to GRIP site. While Adam and Iben made a 1.2m snow pit inside the main snow pit to dig for the reflections from the radar survey in the pit the day before, Tamara sat up the GPS equipment and Daniel worked on collecting radar data around the beacon antenna.

The snow pit now around 1.7 m deep and covers an area of 6x6m, which has been probed with avalanche probes of up to 3 m depth. Inside this main pit we have a deeper pit going 1.2m further down. Huge snow blocks from the pit are laying around the edge of the pit making it harder to get snow out of the pit. We have started placing the biggest blocks in a corner of the pit.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day we have still not found the borehole casing. We are therefore extending our stay at Summit Station, as the plan was to leave tomorrow. We are very grateful for all the support we get from the people at Summit Station and to NSF for working out letting us extend our stay at Summit, as the station is full with the flight tomorrow.

What we did today:

Station morning meeting at 7.30am.
Continued digging, probing, and shoveling over the drill dome.
Radar survey for the beacon antenna + drill/science trench.
GPS measurements.

Weather today: Nice and sunny day. Wind 10-13 kt turning from SSW to SW. Temperatures between -41°C and -24°C.


The GRIP team: Adam Britton, Daniel Steinhage, Tamara Gerber, Iben Koldtoft

Group picture in the snow pit. Adam is in the snow pit inside the snow pit, while the rest of the team is in the 1.7m deep snow pit. To the left you can see the biggest snow blocks filling up one corner of the pit.