Our gear and the C-130. We were dropped off with our gear in Kulusuk by the C-130.
Hurry up and wait may the best way to describe our schedule lately. You never know exactly when a plane or helicopter will be ready to take you into the field or when the weather will be good. All you can control is when you have your gear ready to go.
The C-130 dropped us off in Kulusuk, Greenland on Sunday (3/29/15) with over 13,000 pounds of science gear, snowmobiles, food and people. All the gear was loaded on 3 big pallets and fork lifted outside the airport next to a shipping container. Joe immediately started breaking down the pallets so we could start organizing the gear for the field. Monday brought a storm so we had to wait until Tuesday to sort our gear into the approximate Helicopter loads. We will be using a Bell 212 Helo to get into the field using 10 flights over 5 weeks to get the gear in and out.
Sorting the gear was difficult this year. We will be conducting five different science projects to better determine the amount of water retained in the ice in this portion of SE Greenland (you will hear about each separately in the blogs to come). We have to make sure all the gear for each helo load includes everything we need for each particular science project. For instance, we had to make sure the generator for the drill came in with the drill, not with the radar equipment; that the tool kit for the hydro gear was loaded with the hydro gear; and that the emergency and camp gear flew in on the first helo flight, and so on.
As we were moving our boxes around Lynn was diligently taking notes on which boxes were in each load and how much they weighed. Just after our morning team meeting on Wednesday (4/1/15) we put all our boxes in to a spreadsheet to calculate the total weigh for each load. I will backtrack slightly here to tell you a little about Kulusuk, Greenland. It is a beautiful town with mountain peaks rising above it and a beautiful fjord. It is a destination for the very adventurous skier and tourist. It has about 350 residences and one small grocery store. In short, this is not the place you can pick up a spare part, for say, a highly specialized ice core drill or water sampling equipment. So it is very common that we overpack. Send in a few extra spares for the “just in case” scenario and multiple rolls of duct tape.
This year we packed a few extra spares. We were overweight!!! The rest of Wednesday morning was spent on the computer moving boxes around and cutting out what we could to get our gear weight down. In the afternoon we started shifting gear around, and making the changes we had to make.
View from Kulusuk over the sea ice. The low visibility has delayed flights.
This all occurred at an accelerated rate because we were told by Air Greenland that they could move our flights to our field site earlier, to Thursday (4/2/15). We worked fast and hard to get ready to go. Wednesday night we were tired but ready! Thursday morning brought another storm so instead of heading to the field we got some much needed rest. It is now early Friday (4/3/15) morning, with OK weather. We will have breakfast and wait at the hotel for a 9 am call from the helo pilot to see if we are on the schedule for today. Hopefully we will launch for the field toady with two flights. The first will take Josh, Clem and I along with the camp gear. The second will bring Kip and Olivia and the hydrology. Fingers crossed or getting to our field site and starting the actual science soon. Fingers crossed for getting to our final destination today.
Tags: cryosphere, drilling, Greenland, Greenland Aquifer Expedition 2015, ice
At the beginning there was a lot I didn’t understand, but as check this sight out
I am beginning look forward to each new article. Keep up the good work .
Barb Smith
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