Camping on the Northwall Firn Glacier.

With the blessing of two wonderful days of clear weather, all our equipment was moved into place this morning. The ice coring can now begin. We anticipate finishing the drill assembly today and drilling by mid-morning tomorrow at three sites on the Northwall Firn glacier: the two “domes” and the saddle, where the team will look for ice-filled crevasses with sonar while the first dome is being drilled.

All that will remain after this is the simple matter of getting the ice from this glacier back to our freezer facility in Ohio without melting. (And this is not a simple matter!)

Photos here are courtesy of Scott Hanna and David Christenson of Freeport McMoRan.

A view from the glacier.

The warm morning sun beats down on these retreating glaciers.

Freezers hoisted on to the glacier, powered by generator, will keep our ice cores frozen until they can be transported to a large freezer in Tembagapura. We will use a large plastic container, normally used in mining operations, to hold the cores.

Setting up camp.