Crisis meeting and deployment

 It almost wasn't a trip..........

The drilling team has been having a terrible time out on Summit this seasons. The drill has gotten stuck three times in 4 weeks. Twice at depth (around 90 m) which means they have to use glycol to free it, and once at around 6 meters (which means they can dig it out). The drill teams is exhausted, we are running out of glycol, and having the drill be permanently stuck has been called catastrophic. A crisis meeting yesterday was called to determine whether to send anyone else up to the ice.

Fortunately, there is enough to do for Science Team 2 (my team) to fly out as planned. The potentially frustrating bit is that, with fewer holes drilled in the ice than expected, we may run out of things to do. There is only 1 flight window per month so it may turn into a couple of weeks being bored on the ice with nothing much going on.

Despite all this, the plan is still for me to fly to Greenland on the 9th, so last minute preparation is happing. The extreme cold weather gear is ready to go, as are a collection of things to distract me should things get a little tedious.

It has been a "warm" season at Summit so far (this is part of the problem with the drill), but it is still going to take some acclimatization.

The plan is to post regularly, but who knows if that actually happens - watch this space!!!!