My Blahhhg

Yep. Still here.

We sit atop an ice plateau that is 2 miles thick, an endless supply of frozen water. The challenge is turning it into something that we can drink. We have something called a Rodwell, a hole bored into the ice and a spray of warmer water melts it as it goes down then we pump it out and drink it or flush it or shower twice a week. It gets deeper and deeper and last week we just passed the 500 foot depth for this well.

A consultant for the program named John Rand sent us this fun graph:


(click on graph to enlarge)

Using ice core data from Tony Gow, collected in 1981-82, which dated the ice based on the depth, Mr. Rand correlated the depth of our well water with the age of the ice in terms of historical events. At 500 feet down, the ice that we're melting to drink today fell as snow in Antarctica during the time of the fall of the Roman Empire in 550 AD. That beats the 14 year old haddock.

So we're still waiting around, 6 days after our scheduled station opening day. We've got a warming trend going on but whether or not we'll warm up enough for a plane later tonight is sketchy. It's currently -53.4C (-64.F). Stay tuned...