Rough weather and snow drilling

On Jan. 9-10, the weather was pretty rough with low visibility (but not too low to work), blowing snow, 25 knot winds, and wind chills up to -40 C. We spent most of those days drilling holes in the snow with a Kovacs drill and a small motor down to 4 meters depth. Then we loaded small explosives in the hole (two 150-gram pentolite boosters) and backfilled the hole, packing down the snow to prevent blow outs. We drilled and loaded 41 shot holes in that way for seismic reflection imaging of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and for comparison with the surface shots we would be doing. It took us about 15-20 minutes to drill and load each hole once we got in a routine.

Nick and Galen drilling one of the shot holes. I was barely able to catch one or two photos on Jan. 9th because it was too cold to take off my gloves, and we were working non-stop all day trying to make progress on the drilling.

On Jan. 10th in the afternoon, the sun came out, and the weather warmed a bit. Once we finished the drilling and loading, we tested the Geode cabled system in preparation for the first shooting day.

Testing the Geode 48-channel, cabled seismic system.

On days with a lot of blowing snow, sometimes we would get to our tents or wake up in the morning to a fair bit of snow drifting over the tent door...

The Arctic Oven tents sometimes needed to be dug out after a day of blowing snow.