Right after breakfast, we had to get into our ECW (extreme cold weather gear) to learn how to profile cracks in the sea ice for safe travel in heavy vehicles across ice cracks. We learned how cracks form, what different types of cracks mean about the ice and why sea ice is so dynamic. We had to dig a long trench to get a cross section of the crack and then drill a hole every 1/2 meter to determine if the ice was think enough to drive our vehicle over. It needs to be at least 30 inches or 76 cm thick to safely drive a vehicle over. Here is a picture of me holding the drill with one flight on it. A flight is a one meter long "drill bit" that is able you can connect multiple other bits onto to make it even longer. The thickest ice we found was only 2.2 meters thick (about 7 feet 4 inches).
We then loaded all of our equipment into a Hagglund (shown below) and drove out to profile some ice cracks.
Here we are digging out a trench, drilling the ice, cleaning out extra ice from the holes and measuring the thickness of the ice.
Here is another shot of the Hagglund with McMurdo in the distance. You can also make out the NASA observation station as well.
I got hot from all the shoveling and actually needed to take off "Big Red." I paused for a minute to take a picture with Dr. Sean Place. His team is also researching the Antarctic fish so we will be interacting with their team often. Normally, you would be able to see the air field behind me, but because of the winds, our visibility was drastically altered during our training today.
Finally, here is a group shot of our training team and the Hagglund as well as me and some of the people riding in the back on the way back to McMurdo after a long and exhausting day. We will certainly sleep well tonight!
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