Field updates from Muller Ice Cap

  Daily Report for 29 May 2025 Today we finally got lighter winds, permitting us to continue  packing up camp, as well as digging our cargo out of snowdrifts.  During the afternoon, weather even permitted us to receive 2 Twin O tter flights, albeit only barely, as the Twin Otter pilots Troy and  Liam had to land their second flight to camp several kilometers from  Camp to find permissible weather, and then taxi on the surface of the ice cap t o our camp – just amazing! Now we just hope for clear weather tomorrow, so we can continue with flights both by the Twin Otter and Basler now stationed in Eureka to help us demobilize our camp completely.   What we have done today: - Continued packing up camp. - Groomed the skiway twice to clear drifts. - Dug our cargo line out from snow drifts. - Loaded 2 Twin Otter flights. - Camp members in Eureka helped off load the Twin Otter flights before leaving for Yellowknife.   We are now 8 in camp (...

Daily Report for 28 May 2025 Another both snowy and windy day here in our camp, but still very  festive as we celebrated Richards birthday, with banners, balloons,  cake, games, dinner, port wine, movies and of course birthday  songs in both English and Danish! For the latter, Richard chose the  following “instruments” for us to imitate: Tents flapping in the wind,  snoring and finally, our small but noisy alarms for deterring/startling polar  bears. All in all, a nice day despite of the inhospitable weather outside, which did demand our attention every now and then, when the drifts tried to creep into our main structures, or wind gusts almost took away an outhouse as well as a panel for our freezer. Anyhow, winds started subsiding after dinner, and we all hope this trend continues, so we can dig out camp and cargo, and groom the skiway tomorrow morning. We really want the two planes now on standby in Eureka to come here as soon as weather permits!  ...

  Daily Report for 27 May 2025 A snowy day here in our camp. With both snowfall, snowdrift and  windy conditions, flights were unfortunately out of the question  today, so apart from keeping camp open, warm and powered, the 8  of us in camp focused on getting well rested after many long days  preparing for our demobilization. In Eureka the crew of 5 had plenty to  do getting the cargo from yesterday sorted into shipping containers and rush cargo to go on upcoming cargo flights out of Eureka.   What we have done today: - Kept essential equipment running in camp despite wind, snow and snowdrift. - Rested after many busy days. - Camp members in Eureka have organized cargo flown out yesterday.   We are 8 in camp (Etienne, Iben, Rebecca, Richard, Nicholas, Tessa, Julien and Bo) We are 5 in Eureka (Alison, Jaime, Nerilie, Fei and Anais)     Alison Criscitiello and Bo Vinther.   Wx at Müller: Snow and snowdrift ...

  Daily Report for 26 May 2025 A big flight day here in our camp, starting out with many hugs and  goodbyes, as Alison, Fei, Nerilie, Anais and Jamie left camp for  Eureka by the first of a total of four Twin Otter demobilization  flights today. On next three flights we managed to ship out the  remaining firn/ice cores from camp, our main drill tent, the eclipse drill,  all firn-gas equipment, and last but not least our main generator. This  generator weighs more than 500kg, so getting it on the Twin Otter took quite a bit of preparation, and both guidance and parking skills from the Twin Otter pilots, aligning the cargo hatch of the plane with our sledge, carrying a platform on which we had placed the generator just before the plane arrived! All told, the Twin Otter had 90 minutes on snow, before the generator and eclipse drill had been loaded onto the 3 rd mission, a time just short enough that the Twin Otter could manage a fourth mission to camp ...

  Daily Report for 24 and 25 May 2025 Another busy weekend here at Muller Ice Cap, progressively  packing down camp, and winding up science operations. Hence,  our camp now looks very different, without the big drill tent, the  freezer, the firn-gas tent, the shower tent, the main generator tent  and so on! All packed and ready on the ever-growing cargo line next  to the skiway. The skiway itself also looks different much smoother and a  bit longer as well after extensive grooming in preparation for upcoming flight operations. While all this has been going on, we also managed to drill a fourth 70 meter core, and reach the end of the lock-in zone in the third shallow bore hole. While our traditional more relaxed weekend schedule once more had to give way for camp necessities, we did manage to enjoy nice meals together in the best weekend spirit.   What we have this weekend today: - Finished drilling of shallow core for firn-gas sampling, en...

  Daily Report for 23 May 2025 Finally, a nice sunny day with moderate to low wind here in our  camp! On days like this, even tedious tasks become a lot easier.  Hence, we managed to use the snow drift right next to the main  drill tent to fill out the inclined trench, finished disassembling the  freezer despite its frozen up joints and hinges, and got freezer  elements as well as many drill boxes to the cargo line. Also, the firn-gas  sampling measured a record number of levels today, extending working hours late into our beautiful evening. And then camp got to enjoy the beautiful backlit pit in camp, with the best possible solar angle illuminating the wall! The skiway also got a double grooming, as well as an extension, in anticipation of upcoming flight operations next week.   What we have done today: - Continued drilling of shallow core for firn-gas sampling, current depth: 65m.   - Continued firn-gas sampling, 3 more levels sam...

  Daily Report for 22 May 2025   While weather forecasting has come a long way, we once again had to realize that weather in remote locations can be tricky to forecast. Today all available weather models looked promising, calling for decreasing winds as the day progressed. Until lunch time our weather here at Müller Ice Cap behaved as predicted, and we managed to clear camp of the snowdrifts most in the way. After lunch, however, wind picked up again, this time from a direction almost 90 deg offset from the wind we had yesterday. Hence the snowdrifts we had not managed to clear, quickly started to create new snowdrifts almost perpendicular to the original ones, quite a nuisance to say the least. Anyhow, the forecast for tomorrow is good, so now we just hope, that the weather up here reads up on this good forecast and behaves accordingly!     What we have done today: - Continued drilling of shallow core for firn-gas sampling, current depth: 58m. ...

Müller Ice Core Drilling Project Daily Report for 21 May 2025 Wind, snow and snowdrift all night and all day! Good thing we  have a nice kitchen tent, that we can all be in, as well as a drill tent,  where we had lots to do! Hence, we proceeded with disassembling  our intermediate drill system. First, we had a cable-cutting ceremony,  as cutting the cable from the winch to the drill signifies the end of all  operations in our main bore hole. Then we moved on to pack up the various components of our intermediate drill system, and by the end of the day most parts had gone nicely into boxes. Now, we just hope for a day with lower winds so we can pack down the tent, and resume the firn-gas sampling operation.    What we have done today: - Cut cable between intermediate drill and winch. - Packed down most of the intermediate drill system. - Kept main area of camp operational despite growing snowdrifts.   We are 13 in camp (Alison, Etien...

  Müller Ice Core Drilling Project   Daily Report for 20 May 2025 Another successful and eventful day here in our camp! First of all  the firn-gas drilling and sampling program found the top of the air  bubble lock in zone. This is the depth at which the air starts to be  really isolated from the atmosphere, and hence the air in the ice  is several decades old. The lock in zone is usually only some 10m  deep, so we are also hopeful to wrap up the firn-gas project within days - weather permitting. In the main bore hole, we managed to complete a bore hole logging from bottom to the top of the liquid column. This is another mile stone, both because the logging was done with our brand new mini-logger and due to the fact that this is the last thing we needed to do before taking down all the main core drilling equipment. Today we also managed to fly all remaining main core boxes to Eureka – thank you to the Twin Otter crew for coming right before the wea...

  Daily Report for 19 May 2025 A windy day here on the ice, making most of our planned work  in camp impossible, due to both wind, drift and low visibility.  Maybe the Canadian nature simply insists on a fairly relaxed  Victoria Day for everybody, even our small population of 13 here  on the remote Müller Ice Cap? Anyhow, as the winds decreased a little  in the afternoon it was possible to check up on the firn-gas and shallow  drilling site (our suburbs), to expedite the resumption of the firn-gas operation. As we hoped for, all was mostly well out there, just a lot of snow to clear, and a shallow drill tent in need of some re-inflation. Hence, operations will be up and running again tomorrow.   What we have done today: - Made sure we have heat, power and water in camp. - Secured and re-secured tents and items in camp. - Cleared tent exits from snowdrifts. - Relaxed a bit, while waiting for the wind to die down. - Made the firn-gas a...

  Daily Report for 17 and 18 May 2025 A fantastic weekend here at the Müller Ice Cap. First of all, we  celebrated the end of the main core drilling, with a delicious  Saturday dinner: Maple candied sockeye Salmon nuggets  accompanied with smoked salmon, rice and veggies for the main course  and apple pie for dessert – thank you Rebecca for cooking! Then Sunday  morning, a new adventure here in Camp: The Müller Ice Cap Spa! Now that the main  drilling operation has ended, the heating equipment and power needed for recovering drill liquid has been diverted to generate hot water for showers and washing. A shower is a much welcome addition to camp, as most of us have not had a nice bath for close to 2 weeks - thank you Julien for setting this up! The weekend has also been productive in other ways, with drilling of four Kovacs cores and the continuation of shallow-drilling and firn-gas sampling as well as digging and sampling of pits. In the drill tent we ...

  Daily Report for 16 May 2025 Today we did not manage to retrieve more core from the main  bore hole. At a depth of 603m we encountered the first rocks in  the ice and managed to drill through them, until approx. 613m,  where we have clearly reached a non-ice layer that we cannot  penetrate. Hence, by dinner time our drilling captain Julien declared  the main core drilling operation complete. Due to the amazing effort  of several camp and drill teams we managed to reach our goal, drilling an ice core through the Müllers ice cap! Our estimate of the final depth of the core is 612.98m (probably +/- 2cm as the 3 final cores have not been fitted together). We have decided to celebrate this great ice coring achievement tomorrow, as part of our festive Saturday tradition. The firn-gas drilling and sampling is also making good progress with another two levels sampled today and another 8m drilled.   What we have done today: - Completed the main c...

  Daily Report for 15 May 2025   Today we managed to retrieve one more core from the main  bore hole. Drilling is slow, as we have to grind through ice with  quite a bit of sand and stone, something our ice core drill is not  really optimized for. While the drill teams keep at it to get as much  bottom material as we can, many other measurements are ongoing and Fei  reports a very interesting mercury observation at Müllers Ice Cap: “On May 13, we observed the occurrence of a mercury depletion event in the ambient air over the snow surface. The event lasted about 2 days with the air mercury concentration dropped to zero at times. This event is a direct result of bromine explosion over sea ice, suggesting that the Müller ice core might be promising in reconstructing past sea ice extent in the region”.   What we have done today: - Drilling main core all day, managed to retrieve one more core of silty ice, length 76cm. - Normal logging and O...

  Müller Ice Core Drilling Project   Daily Report for 14 May 2025   An extremely exciting day today in the best possible of ways!  In the second main core drill run, a small stone-like object could  be seen in the core (approx. 603 depth), in the following runs, more  and more similar objects appeared, and finally in the afternoon we got  a core with a color change of the ice itself – clearly, we entered the silty ice  seen near bedrock! The next two drill runs produced first some 27cm of core with a clear stone, and then 12 cm of core with another stone. Both short cores have been wrapped in black plastic to minimize light exposure to facilitate later luminescence dating. While the 27cm core got a few min. of light exposure, the second did not, thanks to a team effort diligently guided an carried out by Julien, who has experience in dark extraction of core material from ice core drills. Later on Iben organized a red light only zone in our fre...

  Daily Report for 13 May 2025 Late in the evening we hit another milestone in the main core  drilling, passing the 600m mark! Ice still contains lots of bubbles,  which is very exciting, as it suggests it is from a time period with  limited surface melting. In the firn-gas “suburbs” sample collection  and measurements are also progressing, with two more levels sampled  today. Finally, we also managed to ship out 36 ice core boxes to the freezer in Eureka, both thanks to the Rod and Issy piloting and loading the Twin Otter -åå++++++++++++and the kind help of, Rachel, Dave, Igor and Sergei as well as Eureka personnel, including Don making sure our freezer was turned on. Thank you so much to all involved in this important shipment out of camp!   What we have done today: - Drilling main core, drilled 16 runs from 573.91m to 600.83m (26.92m). - Logged and O18 sampled bags from bag 574 to 600. - Continued drilling of shallow core for firn-gas ...

  Daily Report for 12 May 2025   An exciting day here in our camp at the Müller Ice Cap. First of  all the first samples were collected in the firn-gas tent: in-situ  measurements of mercury, CO2 and CH4 and 5 cannisters were  filled with air for analyses at home.   Hence, now we hope for many  more samples taken at gradually increasing depths in the coming days. In  the main core drill tent there was also lots of excitement, during the first  half of the day, due to the ever-increasing likelihood of us hitting bedrock. Unfortunately, a different kind of excitement could be felt in the tent, as it was increasingly difficult to break the core! After a difficult core break, the filter was deployed in the bore hole, coming up 1/3 full. Drilling was resumed, yet core breaking remained difficult for the next two runs. Thus, filtering continued until the end the late shift, and a top up of estisol in the borehole.   What we have done tod...