Logging of the Borehole

Hi - I am catching up on my blog. We have been pretty busy for the last while. The drillers hit just over 1000 m deep early last week so they shipped us back out to the rig for the geophysical logging. Flat Stanley thought we were crazy as there were no trees to cut - but this is a different kind of logging in which different kinds of instruments are put all the way into the borehole to tell us different things about the rock - such as how magenetic the different rocks are, how much they weigh, and how fast sound goes through them. The instruments are called tools and they are lowered into the borehole using a big long wire rope using the winch in the picture. It was brought by the Thomas's all the way from Germany. The neatest tool is called the borehole televiewer and it makes an image of the borehole using ultrasound just like is done in the hospital. Here is a picture of some of the borehole inside - Flat Stanley - get out of the borehole - the pressure is too high there! You can see a lot of cracks that we can use to help us know about the rock.

This time was very busy - it was about 78 hours (more than 3 days) straight. We would take turns sleeping and working at the bunk house by the rig. Here are the four of us at the end of the 78 hour period - everyone is very happy - the logging was very successful and lots of good data was acquired.

Now they begin some more coring with a smaller core size called 'NQ' - this is basically for the experiment that I have to do in a few days. I hope they get a couple of hundred metres more of the borehole for the 'fracing' experiments - will keep you up to date.

Sad thing - I have not seen any penguins again - they joke out here that it is because Flat Stanley and I are out here now.

Monster Issue Solved!

Look what turned up today! An Adelie Penguin! So, that is what the monster was . This one was checking us out - they are very curious and they are also not afraid at all. They likely do not have any real enemies out here on the ice (but they probably have to watch for seals and orcas when they go swimming - one website says that they push one of their unlucky friends in first to see what happens before they jump in themselves!)

Flat Stanley - get away from the penguin - you are not supposed to bother them and you could get in trouble! Of course, they can bother us as much as they want!








The penguins here are likely on their way (maybe a bit lost too) to the big 'rookeries' which are not too far away. Right now the females should be laying eggs and then the mother and the father will take turns watching the eggs while the other parent goes for food in the ocean. They have to walk all that way. Right now the rig is about 8 km to the ice edge.

The shipped me back to McMurdo. I caught a ride with Hedley (the 'sparky' or electrician on the rig team) in a Haglund. This cost me nothing - but if you go to the Antarctic centre in Christchurch they will charge you a lot to go on a short ride!

Monsters???

Hello Grade 1's - Look what I found today. This a picture of the snow with strange tracks in it - what could have made the tracks?? It must be a strange creature as it looks like it was walking as shown in the picture above. Then in the picture below it looks like it went sliding on its belly (Flat Stanley is pointing out the belly track between the two arrows - can you see if if you look very closely?) and pushing with its claws. Could it be a monster or some kind?? I hope I get to see it - let me know what you think could make those tracks. They are right by the rig.

Out at the rig - some sights (but no penguins yet)

First day at the rig - I actually got the computers to work (thanks Len and Luke back at the U of A). I figured out the hydraulics and checked out the rest of the equipment. We are waiting for a new container to arrive from Scott Base so we can set up a lot of the equipment. But, some other things happened. The ice divers came out to try to fix the balloons that lie under the ice along the drill rig riser. This helps to support the rig. The ice is a bit more than 7 metres thick here. So think about that - the diver has to jump in the hole in the ice and drop through that much ice into what is called the platelet ice at the base. Then they have to swim through that in the dark (the light does not make it through) in the extreme cold of the water (-1.8 C).




Another interesting sight in the sky - some very unusual ice crystal halos. The one on the left was opposite from the sun - it is likely what is called a Parhelic cirle. The rainbow like one was nearly straight up - and it may be a Circumzenethal. Apparently these are not seen very often.
Check out the website http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/spanti.htm for more information.

Out to the rig again - but this time in the heli!

Hi All - Finally, I am out to the rig to get going on setting up the equipment for a few days. But, I got very lucky - I ended up taking the helicopter out (Bell 212) for the short (~15 minute) ride for the daily core run.

Here again is yet another picure of Erebus on the way - at least it is a bit clearer. The wind blown ice shows some interesting patterns too.










Most of the day shift was already asleep by the time I got there - but Jono found me a bunk at the camp and off to bed. The camp mostly consists of a number of containers that have been set up. The containers and tents on the left have the kitchen, the dinner room, the lounge, and the shower and the laundry. As well the water comes from a reverse-osmosis process of the sea water. The containers on the right are the sleeping accomodations - they are basically bunks (there are 5 in my container). It is about 500 metres from rig.

Good news - there have been penguins around!!! They told me that an Emperor penquin was checking out the camp - so hopefully I will get to see them. Apparently we are only 8 km from the ice edge.

Back in McMurdo for a Few Days

Things have been rather slow - we are just waiting to go - and I will likely head out to the rig tommorrow or Tuesday. But here are a few sites around McMurdo from the bit of hiking we did. Flat Stanley came along too - he needed some exercise after eating all those cookies last week. Here he is jumping up and dow with the two Thomas's when we reached the top of Ob Hill (about 230 m high).

Observation Hill - this is a hill right next to McMurdo that we are allowed to climb to see the view. At the top of Ob Hill is a cross that was erected in 1912 by the party who found Scott's team. Scott and his men tried to be the first to make it to the South Pole but they were beaten by Amundsen. They then perished on the return journey. They walked all the way to the South Pole from here but they apparently became trapped in a blizzard before they could get back to their large cache. Their records and pictures actually survived. There are lots of good websites that talk about this story - and of other early explorers such as Shackleton and Amundsen.



Here are a couple of views from Obs Hill. The one of the left is back towards Erebus again (I cannot take enough pictures of it) - but unfortunately it is covered at the top by clouds.The next one shows the direction towards the ANDRILL rigsite - but it is too far away to be able to see the camp unless you have some binoculars!





If you look very closely you can see the temporary sea ice runway with four large propeller planes down there. If I am lucky I will get to go to those mountains one day for a field trip to check out the source of the different rocks.





Finally, here is a picture of what some of the ground around Obs Hill looks like - you might think you were on Mars!

So, this is likely the last post till I go to the rig - maybe tommorrow! Then things will be very busy.

Out to the ANDRILL rig - finally!!

Hi - Big day. After the morning meeting we looked at the weather and decided to go out to the rig. Eight of us got our ECW gear on and hopped in two of the Mattracks for the long (~ 2 hour) drive out (about 38 km from McMurdo) on the sea ice. It was cloudy still and a bit windy so Mount Erebus (the volcano) was looking ominous. When we leave we have to call in on the radio to say 'MacOps, MacOps, this is vehicle 157 driver Blank (Leslie Blank was our driver) loaded with 4 souls, enroute to ANDRILL site, ETA of 13:30, contact Laura at extension 1234 beeper 4567'. Then they tell us it is okay to go. If we do not call back to say we arrived they will immediately begin the SAR (Search and Rescue) operations - so it is very important to call so you do not get into trouble!





Finally, the drill rig appeared. It is difficult to see as it has a white shroud which does not stand out from the snow until your are close. We pulled up and finally got out to stretch after our long trip.


Everyone was pretty busy. A core was just being retrieved from the earth (about 550 m below the sea floor which is about 400 m from the ice surface). The core is a cylinder of the rock that has been cut - it is about 3 m long.

Here is an interesting piece of core - it may not look like much but it is a certain kind of rock that tells us that at the time it was put down the earth had to be cold and that ice covered the sea here. The name of the rock is called 'diamict'. But it is also interesting to my colleagues and me because of the long fracture in it - I know you may think I am crazy but that fracture tells us a lot about the forces (stresses) in the earth (for the academics see Li and Schmitt, 1998 :)).
Up inside the rig to see. Oh Oh - Andrew - get that pipe wrench out of your ear - you should never stick anything in your ear!! (Actually, Andrew is trying to listen for two small clicks made when the core barrel locks into place after falling nearly 1 km down through the drilling pipe! If he does not hear the clicks then that can be a problem as the core may not be cut properly and lost. These guys are scientific drillers - they are not paid by the foot as most drillers in the oil or mining industry would be - they are paid to get complete sets of core or else the project would be a waste).

We then had a big discussion of how to proceed. In such projects one can never know for sure what will happen and so one has to keep in mind how to best proceed. It looks like I will be here till the end now as I do not think that I can carry out the hydraulic fracture in some of the rocks which are too soft that they recently went through (Cheryl will be sad but my grad students are happy I expect). This picture shows Alex Pyne (the rig engineer) discussing the various options and using the kitchen steel wall as a blackboard! We made plans for me to go out to begin setup early next week assuming more of the equipment arrives (it should at 2:00 am tonight on the scheduled C-17 flight from ChristChurch).


Finally, just before we returned to McMurdo, the helicopter came out to pick up the core. They had not been able to for awhile due to the bad weather. Flat Stanley - get away from the rear blades - that is the most dangerous place you can stand!!! and the pilot will soon tell you to get away.







One final note - all you tech types born in the later part of the baby boom will very likely be familiar with our hero - Tom Swift Jr (well, actually the new Tom Swift Jr.) Remember old Tom - he was a gadzillionaire youth who made lots of great inventions as he basically had most of the military/industrial complex at his disposal - well, this is what it seems like being at McMurdo! Eat your heart out!



Li, Y.Y., and D.R. Schmitt, Drilling induced core fractures and in situ stress, J. Geophys. Res., 103, 5225-5239, 1998

Stuck in McMurdo Still

Hi all - we tried to go to the rig yesterday (Tuesday) and also again today (Wednesday) but the wind is too strong. No flights can get in or out either. So, a few things around here. We get our food at the 'Galley' (it used to be run by the Navy). The food is pretty good although it would be good to see something fresh - that will likely not be for awhile as other things will have priority when the planes can get down again. There are 4 meals a day - the last one is called 'midrats' which is at midnight - it is for the people who are working the night shift.



Basically, you can eat all you want. For lunch today I had a chicken burrito. Wednesday is also cookie day and the baker makes fresh cookies - Hey - Flat Stanley - don't be such a pig! Just take one cookie at a time! They also have a soft ice cream machine here - but it is so popular that they have to put a lock on it between meals!





Here are a couple of my colleagues in our little office at Crary Labs at McMurdo - the two Thomas's (Dr. Thomas Wonik and Thomas Grelle) both from Hannover. They have brought all of their geophysical logging gear from Germany to use when the coring is done. They sent two Thomas's so we only have to learn one name, that is very convenient. Can you believe I have to work with these guys :) - this is what they do all day! They kick back with Flat Stanley :) Now I better run before they catch me - but .....
Thomas (on the right) has been here before on a drilling project about 8 years ago so he will be very good to have around.

Oops - when I was running away look what I ran into - a CONDITION 2 storm, lucky that I ran to my dorm because as soon as I got there they made it CONDITION 1 which means that you are supposed to stay where you are and not even leave the building. All travel out is strictly forbidden as people can get lost in the blowing snow very easily (of course this is what Alberta can look like too sometimes in our worst blizzards). At least it is not so cold - only about -15 C with maybe -30 windchill, for babies after our survival course. Let's hope the weather is better tommorrow so we can go out to the rig.

Driver Training School

Hi all - our last day of training (finally). I learned how to drive a Pisten Bully - these are vehicles that are made in Austria and are mostly used for ski hills - but we will use them to get to the rig. They go a total 15 mph (about 25 km/h) top speed!!! It will take nearly 3 hours to get out to the rig in these.

The other vehicle is a modified 4X4 truck called a Mattrack - it has special tracks instead of wheels. It goes a bit faster (maybe 40 km/h) but it cannot cross very large cracks in the sea ice.

We were supposed to go to the rig today but the weather was too bad. There have been no flights in for some time and all the 'freshies' are long gone! But, the wind has abated and hopefully tommorrow we make it out to the rig to get going!

Sea Ice Training Day

Hi - almost done with my safety training. Today was sea ice - we need this to be able to spot cracks to avoid, to learn what cracks we might cross safely, and to measure the thickness of the sea ice. The pictures below show what when on today. The first one is of some the sea ice itself - a nice color of blue. In the second, Thomas Wonik and myself are bragging about how fast we were able to make two intersecting holes in the ice for holding a tent line loop (Thomas has his pizza lunch with him!).


We then went further out (about an hour out of McMurdo to the north to the edge of the 'old' sea ice that has built up over the last few years because of the blockage of a great big ice berg B-17 and some 'new' sea ice that was created this last year. We measured the thickness of both to be about 3.35 m for the old and 2 m for the new. This is important as they have to keep track of this for the ice roads.











Flat Stanley has been busy - but he is not too smart - Flat Stanley - come out of the Level 2 winds and put some warm clothes on!!! It is very cold and windy out on the sea ice.

Flat Stanley has also been checking out the exhibits here - he is looking at some of the meteorites that have been found in Antarctica. Grade 1's- why is Antarctica a good place to look for meteorites??

Happy Camping on the Ice Shelf

I am back and I survived although I am very tired. We had our Antarctic survival camp. It was a busy two days. First we learned about frostbite, hypothermia, etc. then we got trucked out to the field site and basically told to go build a camp! The camp consisted of building a snow shelter called a 'Quinsy' (I slept in one of those for the night - can you see the hole to crawl into it with steps leading up into the sleeping area), putting up some mountaineering tents, putting up what are called 'Scott' tents after the Scott in the last blog (who did not make it!), and a wind wall out of snow blocks - Phew - that was a lot of work but it was so cold (it may have made it to -50 C with the wind chill) that you did not want to stop working at all. There was no place to warm up either. Once that was done we boiled water to make hot chocolate and cider and to (yuk) try to make our dehydrated dinner palatable (I had rice and black beans but it got cold before the beans and rice were soft!) But we could eat as many cookies and chocolate bars are we wanted as your body burns a lot of energy just trying to keep warm. I think I was able to mostly keep warm during the night, the Quinsy is pretty sheltered but it was still very cold inside. It was amazing that none of us got frozen. Flat Stanley was not allowed to go as he could have blown away (plus he did not bring his ECW (extreme cold weather) gear). My heavy duty Sorels won the day - my feet did not get cold ever - the people with the bunny boots were not all so lucky.
When we got back to McMurdo we had to then learn about helicopter safety (how to use the cool helmets and how to buckle yourself in).

In my few spare minutes I made an Inuksuk (I was the only Canadian of course!). The picture on the left has a distance view of our camp. The 'pyramids' are the Scott tents, they are highly suited to the wind at the Antarctic. Grade 1's, I took two pictures of an Inuksuk (do you know what that is?) from the same spot about 10 hours apart. Why is the sun in such different places??? Can you see the smoking volcano called Erebus in the back of the sunny picture? It is a real volcano and that is actually steam coming out its top - it is quite a site! Erebus is one reason it is good to drill here - every so often it dumps some magma (ash, bombs, flows, etc) and this goes into McMurdo Sound as part of the sediments - and one can readily date these kind of rocks so they help the geologists build a model of the age of the rocks being drilled versus depth.

We get tommorrow off then back to the ice - Monday is a 10 hour outside course in sea ice safety training. I need to take this as the drill rig is on the sea ice this year.

By the way, they will be showing lots of pictures from here on NBC Today show on Monday and Tuesday as well as the Tuesday evening news on NBC. The camera crew went out out to the drill rig too so you can see a lot of the people I am working with.

Next blog after the sea ice training. I hope I get to drive a 'Pisten Bully' too - more later.

Some of the Sights

Hi All - have been busy with things here. Yesterday had the snowmobile course. Today and tomorrow is the big one - 'Happy Camper' school where we will be sleeping in a snow trench or a tent tonight. Then on Monday I have to take my sea ice safety course, then my driving course and then finally I can get out to the rig next week. We are anxious as there is a lot to do out there.

We are trying to get as much out of McMurdo as we can as once I go to the rig I may not be back to 'civilization' again for some time. Last night we walked over to Scott Base where the New Zealand station is. The night before that we walked to 'Scott's Hut' (really Discovery Hut - see Wikipedia article) and took some of these pictures. Scott's team was one of the earliest to visit - his ships got stuck in the ice and they put together the building in the picture in 1911. Twenty five men lived in there!

This is a picture of McMurdo from 'Hut Point'And this is a picture that looks the other way more or less to the North from McMurdo - not a lot out there except rock and ice!