Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Drilling Site (75.29917 °S, 122.44516 °E) – Season 2022/23

Situation Report #01, 03 December 2022

Personnel @LDC: Romain Duphil (IGE), Romilly Harris-Stuart (LSCE), Gunther Lawer (AWI), Matthias Hüther (AWI), Julien Westhof (UCPH), Martin Leonhardt (AWI), Frank Wilhelms (AWI), Giuditta Celli (UNIVE, ISP), Johannes Lemburg (AWI), Rob Mulvaney (BAS), Saverio Panichi (ENEA), Michele Scalet (ENEA), Andrea Devito (ENEA)

Personnel @DC: Markus Grimmer (UNIBE), Florian Krauß (UNIBE)

Weather at LDC 5 pm: sunny

Meteo at DC 5 pm: T = −24°C, Wind = - knt, Wind Chill T = − °C


The Little Dome C Camp has been officially opened today, December 3rd 2022. The large part of the Team arrived last night. Saverio, Michele and Claudio and all the logistic team of IPEV and ENEA worked very hard during the last ten days to open the Camp. There was a lot of snow in the field and every cargo has been delayed because of bad weather and other unforeseen logistic constraints. Despite all this we are here, just two days after what initially planned.

What we did today:

- distributed all boxes in camp and compiled missing items (nothing crucial)

- opened core buffer, temperature inside -40°C

- opened all containers

- opened and settled mechanical workshop

- opened roof of drill tent

- agreed on the layout of the core extraction and logging area

- started cleaning drift snow in the drill tent

- exchanged coupling between winch motor and gear box

- started putting back electrical installations

- unpacked all items and started mounting of the logging table

AWI container is still in Christchurch (NZ), but we have all the material to start.

After a long day we had the time to celebrate Saverio’s birthday with a glass of Dalwhinnie whisky that Romilly had brought. Rob had a lot of stories about the whisky.

Markus and Florian are in Concordia working in setting up the DEP and the Swiss saw in the Cold lab of Concordia.

Unfortunately we have very limited internet connection, since the Satellite is noy working yet. We are finding alternative solutions. For this reason SITREP are in a quite telegraphic style transmitted to Carlo via WhatsApp.


Frank Wilhelms & Rob Mulvaney - LDC, 03.12.2022