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

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

Weather at LDC: sunny, low wind – pleasant day

Meteo at DC 6 pm: T = −38°C, Wind = 5 knt, Wind Chill T = −46°C

Another trip with the Arctic Truck 6x6 from Dome C to LDC brought back Olivier and Philippe, plus the Doctor from Dome C to give the booster vaccination to the remaining LDC personnel. Our recreation tent transformed quickly into a vaccination center – with no queues. As of today, we are one of the very few local communities worldwide with 100% twice vaccinated and 100% boosted!

Temperatures continuously decrease as the Sun gets lower and Antarctic summer comes to an end. Work continues in the drilling tent with the ventilation system and the BEOIC drill now almost completed. Today the exhaust pipes from the drilling tent were installed.

At RADIX, we have now reached 300 m where the ice has an age of about 9400 years. For now, we have no longer encountered the contamination problem that blocked the motor. Tomorrow, hole logging will take place in order to assess the characteristics of the deepest 50 m of the RADIX bore hole.

RADIX drilling depth: 300.0 m

Thomas Stocker and Carlo Barbante