Phew! What a day!
I'm writing this at 1 am. I've had three hours sleep after crashing into bed at 10 pm. But yesterday was such a big day that I've woken up in the middle of the night excited to write about it…
The day prior had been useful but ultimately unsuccessful. While Jacqui and Svenja remained at camp to process the samples from Wednesday; and Craig, Ollie, and Greg headed west to redeploy our seafloor-mounted mooring; Ken, Neill, Nina, and I ventured onto the new ice to attempt our high-resolution platelet cores, all under the watchful eyes and ears of Vanessa and Adam's cameras and microphones. This meant using the platelet coring system to collect our samples in 25 cm segments, giving us a sense of what we're missing when we later reduce down to only three samples per core.
Everything had been going surprisingly smoothly, right up to the point where it came time to siphon off the first of the sub-samples. Things had been going so well, and the weather so amenable, that I'd genuinely believed we'd get through full two cores of sampling. But that was not to be… Our strategy for sampling is to drill through most of the solid sea ice leaving only a short 'plug' (~40 cm long) to sample, forming the topmost section of our 'core' sample. Unfortunately, the sea ice 'plug' snap froze into our core barrel during extraction, and we had no means of 'unsticking' it out in the field. We had no option but to pack everything up and return to camp with the top part of our sample still stuck inside the barrel – now completely ruined. A couple of hours in the warm generator shed allowed that to slide out, but it was too late by then to make any further use of the beautiful, calm, sunny weather for the day.
So, it was with high hopes that we set off to try again today. The weather forecast had been for even better weather – although it was hard to believe that more perfect weather was even possible. Ken, Jacqui, Svenja, and I formed the 'advance party', setting off at 0730 (well, 0745 by the time we'd hooked up the trailers and rolled out of camp) to start the site preparation. We were distracted on the drive out by two separate items of other people's rubbish which we detoured slightly to pick up. And by the most magnificent Fata Morgana (aka 'mirage') that I've ever seen: a double, reflected image of the hills and mountains of mainland Antarctica (~50 km away) extending to nearly half the height of the hills themselves.
Although it was a particularly beautiful morning to be out and about – at least, while travelling to site inside a warm Hagglunds – the weather for the day was actually pretty miserable. The ambient temperature was sitting around -26 degrees, and with steady winds of >20 knots, the wind chill was getting up to around -40 degrees. But we were able to use our vehicle and sledge as a wind break, and we quickly warmed up once our activity got underway. We had enough of a head-start to prepare three sites, only 5 m apart from each other, before Craig and Neill arrived with the remainder of the sampling equipment. As well as the doco team in tow.
A solid two further hours of effort found us jubilant, having secured the first complete platelet core on the 'new' sea ice (i.e., the ice that had been forming only since late-August, rather than early March as usual), and it was time to down tools for lunch. Picking up again after our break, a further 90 minutes of effort had us ready to begin collection of the second set of samples. Once again, the sea ice plug froze to the inside of the core barrel, and we were stuck once again. But this time we were prepared, with ~25 L of hot water on hand to get us out of a sticky situation. Some quick thinking, and problem solving on the fly, from Craig had the plug unstuck without contaminating the sample. And so, we were underway again, and soon had our second complete core in the bag.
By that time, the complementary observational work had been completed, and it no longer made sense to have such a large team on hand. We waved goodbye to the other Hagglunds as five of the team headed back to camp to begin processing the samples and get dinner underway. Ken, Craig, Neill, and I remained at site to complete the sampling trio.
By this time, the temperature had dropped, and the wind had picked up further, forcing us to re-orient the Hagglunds in order to regain our wind-break. Doing so allowed us to do almost all the work in the relative comfort of our sledge's wind shadow. Nonetheless, we did have a quick regroup to assess whether it was worth pushing on with the third core, given the further deterioration in weather conditions. We agreed that it made sense to push on, with the reasonable expectation that we'd be packing up by ~1800 and back in camp ~1900. A long, but safe, day.
Sadly, the winning trifecta was not to be. Unfortunately, the temperature had dropped just enough that when the sample once again became stuck in the core barrel, we were unable to dislodge it. We were forced to abandon sample collection for the day. Further problem-solving and rope-work allowed the safe and controlled recovery of our equipment. We packed and secured our gear inside the vehicle and on the sledges, then drove the ~7 km back to base, which took ~30 minutes.
It was a quiet and reflective journey back. We'd put in over 12 hours of solid, hard work, under difficult conditions, and come away with two out of three precious samples safely put away. While it wasn't quite the end we were hoping for, but today's effort has yielded the most hard-won and thoroughly unique samples of my life! It feels fantastic. And I'm ready to go again tomorrow!
Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.
The day prior had been useful but ultimately unsuccessful. While Jacqui and Svenja remained at camp to process the samples from Wednesday; and Craig, Ollie, and Greg headed west to redeploy our seafloor-mounted mooring; Ken, Neill, Nina, and I ventured onto the new ice to attempt our high-resolution platelet cores, all under the watchful eyes and ears of Vanessa and Adam's cameras and microphones. This meant using the platelet coring system to collect our samples in 25 cm segments, giving us a sense of what we're missing when we later reduce down to only three samples per core.
Everything had been going surprisingly smoothly, right up to the point where it came time to siphon off the first of the sub-samples. Things had been going so well, and the weather so amenable, that I'd genuinely believed we'd get through full two cores of sampling. But that was not to be… Our strategy for sampling is to drill through most of the solid sea ice leaving only a short 'plug' (~40 cm long) to sample, forming the topmost section of our 'core' sample. Unfortunately, the sea ice 'plug' snap froze into our core barrel during extraction, and we had no means of 'unsticking' it out in the field. We had no option but to pack everything up and return to camp with the top part of our sample still stuck inside the barrel – now completely ruined. A couple of hours in the warm generator shed allowed that to slide out, but it was too late by then to make any further use of the beautiful, calm, sunny weather for the day.
So, it was with high hopes that we set off to try again today. The weather forecast had been for even better weather – although it was hard to believe that more perfect weather was even possible. Ken, Jacqui, Svenja, and I formed the 'advance party', setting off at 0730 (well, 0745 by the time we'd hooked up the trailers and rolled out of camp) to start the site preparation. We were distracted on the drive out by two separate items of other people's rubbish which we detoured slightly to pick up. And by the most magnificent Fata Morgana (aka 'mirage') that I've ever seen: a double, reflected image of the hills and mountains of mainland Antarctica (~50 km away) extending to nearly half the height of the hills themselves.
Although it was a particularly beautiful morning to be out and about – at least, while travelling to site inside a warm Hagglunds – the weather for the day was actually pretty miserable. The ambient temperature was sitting around -26 degrees, and with steady winds of >20 knots, the wind chill was getting up to around -40 degrees. But we were able to use our vehicle and sledge as a wind break, and we quickly warmed up once our activity got underway. We had enough of a head-start to prepare three sites, only 5 m apart from each other, before Craig and Neill arrived with the remainder of the sampling equipment. As well as the doco team in tow.
A solid two further hours of effort found us jubilant, having secured the first complete platelet core on the 'new' sea ice (i.e., the ice that had been forming only since late-August, rather than early March as usual), and it was time to down tools for lunch. Picking up again after our break, a further 90 minutes of effort had us ready to begin collection of the second set of samples. Once again, the sea ice plug froze to the inside of the core barrel, and we were stuck once again. But this time we were prepared, with ~25 L of hot water on hand to get us out of a sticky situation. Some quick thinking, and problem solving on the fly, from Craig had the plug unstuck without contaminating the sample. And so, we were underway again, and soon had our second complete core in the bag.
By that time, the complementary observational work had been completed, and it no longer made sense to have such a large team on hand. We waved goodbye to the other Hagglunds as five of the team headed back to camp to begin processing the samples and get dinner underway. Ken, Craig, Neill, and I remained at site to complete the sampling trio.
By this time, the temperature had dropped, and the wind had picked up further, forcing us to re-orient the Hagglunds in order to regain our wind-break. Doing so allowed us to do almost all the work in the relative comfort of our sledge's wind shadow. Nonetheless, we did have a quick regroup to assess whether it was worth pushing on with the third core, given the further deterioration in weather conditions. We agreed that it made sense to push on, with the reasonable expectation that we'd be packing up by ~1800 and back in camp ~1900. A long, but safe, day.
Sadly, the winning trifecta was not to be. Unfortunately, the temperature had dropped just enough that when the sample once again became stuck in the core barrel, we were unable to dislodge it. We were forced to abandon sample collection for the day. Further problem-solving and rope-work allowed the safe and controlled recovery of our equipment. We packed and secured our gear inside the vehicle and on the sledges, then drove the ~7 km back to base, which took ~30 minutes.
It was a quiet and reflective journey back. We'd put in over 12 hours of solid, hard work, under difficult conditions, and come away with two out of three precious samples safely put away. While it wasn't quite the end we were hoping for, but today's effort has yielded the most hard-won and thoroughly unique samples of my life! It feels fantastic. And I'm ready to go again tomorrow!
Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.
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