3 August 2013 Doing the Best We Can With the Conditions

Day 2 Begins with Base Camp Refugees

Late last night on August 2nd, the already high winds and cold temperatures both intensified. Winds increased to an approximate 50mph and temperatures dropped with the associated wind chill. We have already had two tent failures amongst the group, and have consolidated some of the gear into the storage tents in order to make room for our base camp refugees. Others have moved their tents to new locations to escape the highest stretches of the winds. Let's just say there are two outdoor gear company warranty departments that will certainly be hearing from some of our team members upon return back home... The food is so noteworthy, and our conversations in the cook tent so rich and enjoyable that amidst all of this, we are still maintaining good attitudes!

Data Collection Status

We arrived to our drumlin-sampling site at the bottom of the stream cut in the drumlin at approximately 10:00am. We immediately realized that our already poor working conditions from Day 1 had degraded even further due to the increased winds and decreased temperatures. With so much wind-blown silt and debris, digging our new set of sampling pits was quite an interesting task.

The team split into two large teams today: one for excavating new pits, the other for continuing to collect samples. With both jackhammers now functioning (thanks to continued group efforts to troubleshoot some small two-stroke engine problems), excavating sites to sample till is going quite smooth. That is...once you can get used to the wind blown debris!

Thanks to the hard sampling work of Libby, Reba, Tom, and Neal today, we have successfully collected 4 AMS Fabrics worth of till samples. With each fabric necessitating 25 samples, we have approximately 100 intact AMS till samples to date.

Neal had expected our work to be slower here at Mulajokull compared to his previous AMS sampling on tills in the Midwest back home, however, the poor wind conditions are inhibiting our rate of work and sampling tremendously. With the hopes that we would collect thousands of till samples (a hundred or so AMS Fabrics worth) during our 18 days here, it's safe to say at this point the wind has set us behind the anticipated schedule.

Consolidation Test samples have also been slow going. The till contains a much higher quantity of pebbles and small cobbles compared to the tills that Neal and Tom have worked on back home and is proving to be quite difficult to get into the ring-shaped sample boxes without jagged edges of till clasts (individual rocks in a deposit of sediment) sticking out and inhibiting the encasing of the sample. Neal said he would like to get two of these samples at each pit. So far, 9 samples have been attempted and none of them have been successful. Neal and Tom are hoping that we can find a nice layer of silt (much smaller sized sediment clasts) near the top of the drumlin so that Consolidation Test samples can be collected without larger clasts getting in the way.

Wind Dance

Well, it's time for dinner. I'll check back in tomorrow or the day after with more updates on data collection. PLEASE cross your fingers, do a little dance, whatever it takes, to make the winds die down!

This coming Wednesday August 7th is our PolarConnect Event. Make sure you register and get set up to tune-in live with the team and me! If you live in the Coeur d'Alene area you can attend the event at the library Community Room! Our Internet connection here at base camp is quite limited. There will not be any live video feed during the event. Fortunately, we can still connect with you all with audio during our slideshow and answer any questions you have about the research being done, or life out here in general. Looking forward to connecting with you on the 7th!

Cheers!

Jamie