ICELINK in the Field

The traverse work has started this year in collbaoration with Green2ice and Precise. Field work this year will occur from 18 May to and including 6 June.

17-18 May 2025 – Weather is strange these days. It is warm and there is a constant wind from the SW, and the wind speed varies a lot over the day between 5 m/s to 13 m/s. However, the wind direction is consistent and luckily along our skiway. So, we received Skier61 at Noon on…

19 May 2025 – Hopefully, we will receive the Pistenbully that will pull the science traverse 400+ km from EGRIP to the former GRIP site along the ice flow line. The skiway and apron were made nice by groooming. In the garages, teams worked on assembling equipment for the traverse. There are several check lists…

20 May 2025 – Weather today was good for flying, albeit a bit too warm for ideal flight operations. Skier 21 arrived just before Noon, and the crew proceeded with offloading our Pistenbully. In the process of pulling forward after the offload, the plane developed a technical fault, that forced the crew to shut down…

21 May 2025 – First of all, preparations for the departure of the science traverse are going well. The full sled train with a Pistenbully, two heavy sleds and a plastic sled was coupled up and looks nice. Now we will load up the sleds with cargo, equipment, instruments and living space for eight people.…

22 May 2025 – The train of the science traverse will consist of a Pistenbully tractor, two heavy sleds: one with kitchen and dining room and generator, another with a weatherport with bunkbeds for six, a plastic sled with three cargo compartments and a fuel tank, and lastly a small cabin sled with radar equipment…

23 May 2025 – As you go down along a check list, there is almost always an issue which pops up. Today, it was the 7 kW diesel generator that continued to switch off by itself after a few minutes. The generator has not been used since it came back from full service at the…

24-25 May 2025 – Let me begin with this: The weather is really fine. It’s cold, but not so windy, and it’s sunny. Now to the rest: We had planned for the traverse to depart today; but our depth sounder radar, which is capable of mapping details of the entire ice thickness has a server…

26 May 2025 – The decision yesterday to wait another day to allow for fixing the radar has paid off. Today, the radar people could happily announce that the radar is ready. The traverse train will leave tomorrow morning. While the radar got fixed, we excavated a trench so that the traverse crew could begin…

27 May 2025 – So, today just past Noon, the science traverse departed SSW and disappeared in the horizon. The team has now split. At EGRIP, we are now: Josephine, Louise, Frederik, Paul (109th), Thomas, Mario, Michael, Sepp, Sverrir and J.P. On traverse: Helle, Susanne, Samira, Christoph, Steff, Kevin, Niels and Anders. At EGRIP: As…

28 May 2025 – At EGRIP, the crew continued to excavate the sled and the ski under the dome. It is a lot of physical work to cut and remove hardened snow blocks. But progress is made, and more and more of the undercarriage of the dome is exposed. We aim at having the dome…

30 May 2025 – Big changes at EGRIP today. We successfully pulled the dome up a ramp to the surface. It now sits 100 m from the original spot. At the same time, we moved the generator hut, and with that the entire electrical system. In preparation, all electrical installations in the former science and…

31 May – 1 June 2025 – Weather deteriorated Saturday afternoon. We were prepared, and at EGRIP we kept each other company mainly inside the dome. As water supply is working, we did a lot of laundry: bed sheets, towels and tea towels. Everybody got a shower and we enjoyed a Saturday dinner on Sunday,…

02 June 2025 – Most of the day, it was not worth it to work outside. Forecast for tomorrow however, tells us about a good long day of work ahead. We have a lot of cleaning up to do. There are snowdrifts everywhere and we need to excavate cargo in camp. Also, we need to…

03 June 2025 – The days started fine. Weather was good, and people at EGRIP were eager to get going. And many things were done. However, at the first cup of coffee in the morning, news from our traverse group came in. They had lost power from their main generator. A number of phone calls…

05 June 2025 – At EGRIP, we are beginning to build piles of equipment on the surface. We have to empty our garages and empty our underground storage cave. The equipment will be sorted in two piles: What goes on the first shuttle to GRIP, and what goes on the second and last shuttle to…

04 June 2005 – We are packing equipment down and staging it for loading on traverse train; but we also expect 12 persons from the 109th to repair the air craft parked here. When they come, they will stay here for some days. To avoid overcrowding the dome, we have built two heated weatherports with…

06 June 2025 – The 109th have delayed their arrival to EGRIP at least until Sunday, and this means that our traverse crew, now at GRIP, probably cannot be picked up at Summit before Monday. So, at EGRIP, we decided to continue our preparations for packing camp. Mario and Thomas also completed the first of two…

07 June 2025 – The ERC Synergy Project  Green2Ice project (Green2Ice.eu) met one of its main objectives of the season on June 7th when we found the casing of the GRIP borehole. The GRIP drilling finished in 1992 at 3022 m below the surface but without drilling the deepest ice, which was at that time…

07-08 June 2025 – Some really good news: Saturday, the traverse crew reported that they found the GRIP borehole casing at 4.5 m depth. They lowered a borehole camera and found that the casing is intact. This is really good news for the project Green2Ice, as we now can proceed with confidence to move all…