Day 2: Waiting in Kangerlussuaq

The weather situation in the EGRIP camp has not improved. A bubble of warm air is hanging over Greenland, and temperatures have even increased (between -7ºC and -1ºC at the camp today). In addition visibility is low and there has been quite some snowfall at EGRIP so the landing strip for the aircraft is not prepared. No good conditions for flying there. 20 scientists are waiting here in Kangerlussuaq to be brought to the camp, and 15 of our colleagues are waiting in the camp to be flown out. Temperatures are expected to decrease from tomorrow on, but chances are not very high that we will fly.

Also here in Kangerlussuaq it is still warm, and it was slightly raining this morning. As we had taken the day off yesterday for the trip to the glacier, today some preparation work had to be done: The food was packed and luggage prepared on pallets. We know now that we will have enough to eat in the camp….

In the afternoon the weather has improved, and some of us have gone out for a hike. I can do quite some work here since the internet is very good.

Well, that’s what I thought, (that some were hiking and that I could get some work done on my computer), but then I heard that we needed to clean about 250 m of aluminum profiles that are used to hold the ice cores when they come out of the drill. They needed to be cleaned off rests of tape from a previous ice coring project, first mechanically then with turpentine, each cm by hand. And so we spent the past 3 1/2 hours cleaning these profiles and sniffing turpentine. The good thing is that this is done now and we do not have to do it later in in the EGRIP camp, under much worse conditions.

As a reward the chef has prepared a barbecue dinner for us!