Did you guess that is was a generator? Mystery photo #6 is a photo of part of one of our Cat generators that is used to power camp and the drill arch.
At home it is often easy to take advantage of the access to electricity. Here at WAIS, we are much like a mini city, requiring lots of power to run camp and the drill arch. We also have back-up systems in place to ensure we have continuous power. The camp is powered by two Cat generators. They use about 2,400 gallons of fuel a week! Our camp mechanic, Shawn, is responsible for the maintenance and operation of these generators. It is certainly no small task keeping our camp power up and running. These generators provide us with electricity for lights, cooking appliances, and computers. More importantly, the generators power our refrigeration units and the drill. Without this power there would be no ice core collection!
We have only had a few power issues this season. The only time we had a short failure, I was working in the arch. It went completely dark (it is a dark building with few windows) and silent. Dark is especially rare this time of year at WAIS Divide! The outage only lasted about 10 minutes but it was still interesting. It is good thing it was only a brief interruption in power because as soon as the temperature in the drill structure increases, the ice cores are in jeopardy. If the temperature is higher than -20C, we begin to move the ice into a snow basement below the drill arch. It is hard work to get ice in and out of the basement safely, so we hope that we never have to hurry to protect the ice from increasing temperatures.
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