Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Drilling Site (75.29917 degS, 122.44516 degE)

Situation Report #46, 16. January 2022

Personnel @LDC: Saverio Panichi (ENEA, Camp Leader), Carlo Barbante (ISP-CNR, PI), Matthias Hüther (AWI), Calogero Monaco (ENEA), Michele Scalet (ENEA), Jakob Schwander (unibe), Thomas Stocker (unibe), Remo Walther (unibe)

Weather at LDC: sunny,low wind

Meteo at DC 6 pm: T = −34°C, Wind = 5 knt, Wind Chill T = −43°C

Today, one of the sleeping tents was closed and sealed. Also, the AWI container was made safe for overwintering. Another cargo was prepared for retrograding tomorrow.

For some of us, there was time for a Sunday excursion: destination Australian camp, about 5 km away. This was at the request of our Australian colleagues to check the integrity of their containers and verify some of the contents.

At RADIX, we made some progress and arrived at the drilling depth of 320 m. This depth was not reached in one go, but drilling was interrupted by several cleaning intervals which required pulling the drill up to the surface. Also, the anti-torques needed to be resharpened.

RADIX drilling depth: 320.0 m.

Thomas Stocker and Carlo Barbante