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November 1, 2004

Our first cores! We collected 16 meters of core for measuring radioactivity horizons and then moved the drill a couple of feet to start drilling the second core, with which we will go as deep as we can. We made it 10 meters into the second core before we quit for the day.
Then to celebrate, we watched the beginning of "The Day After Tomorrow" onKarl's computer after eating a wonderful spaghetti with Italian Sausage. Unfortunately,we could only watch the first half of the movie, because the battery on his computerran out. Oops.

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November 3, 2004

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I went to one of the corners of the glacier today to scout out a collection site there. It was about a four-hour round trip and provided a nice new perspective on our camp. I had a radio with me, so that I was constantly in touch, but all the same, it's kind of strange being out on your own in a place this big! I returned for lunch time and then worked the rest of the day on helping with the coring and with putting in new mass balance poles to add to the catalog we already have from last year. Steak for dinner again. Yum!

November 4-5, 2004

More mass balance pole work. It takes a while to survey the sites for the poles (using GPS and a 100-meter tape measure), and then after they are put in the right place, we "freeze them in". This means pouring liquid water into the snow around them so that they end up being encased and locked into a block of ice in the glacier. This ensures that they will stay in place until we return next year. It also requires melting a lot of water. The whole process ends up taking a long time, but it is very satisfying once the grid is in place.

November 6, 2004

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I finished up the mass balance poles today and began work on four smaller (one meter) snowpits to compare to the main snowpit we dug a few days ago, giving a picture of how the snow varies from place to place around the glacier. Karl had the most difficult job today. While the drill is inside the drill dome, he does all of the packaging of the cores outside the tent so the cores won't melt. It's been windy for a couple of days, and being outside like that without moving around is cold! Well, this is Antarctica, I guess…