21 November 2008 and then it was quiet!

I woke up on the morning of November 21st to the sound of quiet. The wind stopped blowing and it was a beautiful day in Beacon Valley. The night before Dave and the team were contemplating abandoning the hole and looking for a new drilling location. By lunch time, the team had definitely decided to select a new drilling location. They were not making it to clean ice and were instead hitting ice cement.

I discovered that it was not possible to transmit journals via the internet using the satellite phone as a modem as I had planned. Dave and I decided that it would be best if I return to McMurdo for the weekend. I could make sure the ice cores were placed in cold storage immediately and I could catch up with posting journals to the PolarTREC website. In the meantime, the team will select a new drilling location and set up the drill.

All of the ice cores must be kept at -20 degrees C, so the ice cores are buried in snow banks until helicopter transport to McMurdo where they are placed in freezers. The team will organize the cores at McMurdo at the end of the season and determine which cores go to the National Ice CoreA cylindrical section of ice removed from a glacier or an ice sheet using a specialized type of hollow drill. Enter the definition here. Lab Repository in Denver, Colorado, and which cores require immediate analysis in the laboratories at Boston University and Princeton University.

So I am off to McMurdo via helicopter with the ice cores. The ride back was yet another opportunity to take fabulous geologic photographs.