The whole team made it back to Kangerlussuaq on Friday evening. The plane was delayed a bit getting to us at Dye-2, but luckily we had a sunny and (reasonably) warm day to wait. Everyone came out of field healthy and in good spirits. Some thought that we did not smell good, but I thought that overall it was not too bad, considering.
The twin otter taxiing (two i’s!) to pick us up at Dye-2.
Yesterday, Saturday, everyone took time to relax and have some down time. Mike got to go on a flight with Operation Ice Bridge, a NASA campaign to measure ice-sheet changes using instruments installed in an airplane. Liam rested by editing a paper, writing a funding proposal, and digitizing data from a 1968 report. Aleah went for a run and spotted a caribou or a reindeer. We are still arguing about the difference between the two (if there is one) and which it might have been. Despite now having internet and thus the ability to look up the difference, we still sit and argue about it because it reminds us of all the time we spent during the past weeks sitting in the tent arguing about inane things. Darren claims that he spent yesterday charging his devices and getting his drone controller to once again talk to his drone. Baptiste worked on getting a drill motor to start once again, a task we could have addressed in the field but chose not to, and then went for a nice walk in the hills above Kanger.
Sean and Samira worked on bottling samples, which sounds like work, and probably is, but they did have wine to accompany them. The German snow diggers, Basti and Leander, rode bikes somewhere and back and seemed quite satisfied with their day, but then again we never saw a moment on the ice that they did not seem satisfied with life. Achim and I went for a bike ride to Sugarloaf Mountain to the east of town. The trail to the top is not too hard a hike, but was a bit of a pain for pushing a bike up. One on top, we were awarded a fine panoramic view of the area: the ice sheet to the east, the fjord to the west, and endless wilderness in all directions. Then, we got a proper mountain bike ride back down, including some steep single track.
Max spun out on the Sugarloaf uphill, causing Achim to run into him. Achim got the worse end of the deal.
The view from the top of Sugarloaf, looking east towards the ice sheet (click for a larger view).
Today, Mike, Liam, Aleah, Baptiste, and I are scheduled to fly out again for part 2 of the campaign. We were supposed to have left at 8:15 this morning, but fog over the ice sheet prevented us from leaving on time. We are now looking at a 10:30 departure. We will fly to Crawford Point first and spend several hours drilling a core and installing a firn-compaction instrument. Then, we will fly to Summit Camp and spend the night there. Tomorrow we are scheduled to fly to East Grip, where the Danes are in the early stages of drilling a deep ice core, to work for the day. On Tuesday we are scheduled to have a work day at Summit, and if we stay on schedule we will fly back to Kangerlussuaq on Wednesday.
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