5-11 January 2026

5 January, 2026

Location: Dome C North (DCN)—MYIC Inland Station, 75.0422°S, 123.6312°E, 3239 m asl.

Personnel at DCN: Damien Beloin (traverse leader), Derryn Harvie (deputy traverse leader & drill engineer), David Holley (carpenter), Ed Maguire (diesel mechanic), Kris Keen (diesel mechanic), Andy Lewis (electrician), Meg O’Connell (medical doctor), Dane Eden (diesel mechanic), Thom Whyte (electrician), Lenneke Jong (MYIC glaciologist), Julius Rix (MYIC driller), Joel Pedro (MYIC science lead), Chris Richards (MYIC drill technician), Chris Young (MYIC drill technician), Dave Burdon (diesel mechanic), Josh Kassulke (communications technician), Mingxia Lai (ice core processor, PhD student), Chris Plummer (ice core processor).

Weather at DCN: • Air temp: max -23˚C. • Winds: variable 5-10 knots. • Forecast for next 24 hours: Mostly clear. Winds 5-10 kn. Min/Max: -34/-22 ˚C.

Inland Station Operations, Science, Drilling

Start depth (loggers): 213.45 m
End depth (loggers): 227.7 m
Meters drilled: 14.25 m
Drill runs: 6
Run lengths: 2.50, 1.85, 2.43, 2.50, 2.45, 2.52 m

With the four new team members arriving yesterday we are 18 on site now at Dome C North. There’s a bit louder buzz around the mess, with bigger pots of curry for dinner and even more of Meg’s awesome home-made Naan bread.

The new kids take it easy today on doctor’s order to help their altitude acclimation. Ice core processors Chris and Mingxia joined in the core logging and processing for a few runs to get familiar ahead of stepping in full time in the next days. Great to have the extra experienced hands.

More good full capacity drill runs today as we prepare to move to running the drill in shifts tomorrow (Tuesday). But also a few learnings and surprises.

1. Sharp core dogs make all the difference: For the first four runs we had issues again with ‘hangers’ of up to 30 cm protruding vulnerably from the drill head and clear evidence the dogs are dragging up the core and often only one was engaging. Taking out one of the three core dogs to try to provide some more uneven shear to break the core did not help the situation. For the last two runs the drillers changed the drill head for one with freshly hand-honed dogs and cutters (we continue to use step cutters). The next two breaks were perfect with all dogs engaged and no hanging core. Fastidious sharpening seems to make the difference.

2. It's good to have shear keys: From the consistency of the material coming up in the chip chamber, which is like coconut cream, we expect there is a build-up of cuttings in the base of the borehole. This thick material also binds up in the core flutes that are designed to move the chips up the outside of the drill barrel and into the chip chamber. This afternoon this thick stuff had sufficiently bound up the barrel that an aluminium shear key was neatly sheared in half when we attempted to routinely spin the drill while horizontal on the tower. A good outcome! The shear key was replaced with a new one in 20 minutes, and the barrel cleaned out. Much better than breaking something in the gear box.

3. Stopped drill motors and more snagging on the casing: To try to capture some of the chips in the borehole we did a filtering run in which a special drill barrel with a valve in place of a cutting head (see image) is lowered slowly down the borehole while the chip pump draws fluid through a filter in the chip chamber. It was the first filtering run for us with the deep drill. On the way back up our old problem with snagging the bottom of the casing struck again. Derryn tried to creep through the casing but on attempt after attempt it was clearly catching as the load would increase steeply. To add to the challenge, the drill motor refused to run, so the drill could not be spun to help its way past. All we could think of was to get out of the cabin and manually yank the cable back and forth as the drill was lowered and raised to the catch point. Mercifully this worked and there were high fives, with drill fluid soaked gloves. We’ll do some more thinking about the approach for filtering runs. The motor not spinning turned out to be a cold limit. The slow filtering run and absence of heat normally generated by the motor during drilling had cooled the electronics to -54.5˚C. Derryn warmed it up and we were back in action.

The core logging goes well with the good quality long cores. It's cold work down in the core processing tent, but satisfying to see full racks of cores and boxes filling up for transfer to our buried ice core storage container.

Tomorrow we start operating in two x eight-hour drill shifts, with an early shift from 7am to 3pm and a second from 3pm to 11pm. Each has 2-3 core processors and 2-3 drillers. Some of the traverse team are stepping in to add an extra person to the shifts, especially while Chris and Mingxia are still acclimatising.

The traverse team has loaded two containers and cargo onto traverse sleds ready for the return journey. A fuel cache of excess Jet-A1 drums is being set up in anticipation for next summer.

Four people standing beside a horizontal ice drilling barrel. One man is showing a women some broken pieces of metal. — Derryn shows Mingxia the snapped shear key. Photo: Joel Pedro

Close up of a tiny piece of broken aluminium.

A drill barrel with a valve attachment at its cutting end.

6 January, 2026

Location: Dome C North (DCN)—MYIC Inland Station, 75.0422°S, 123.6312°E, 3239 m asl.

Weather at DCN: •Air temp: max -22˚C. • Winds: W/SW 5-10 knots. • Forecast for next 24 hours: Mostly cloudy. Winds 5-10 kn. Min/Max: -30/-20 ˚C.

Inland Station Operations, Science, Drilling

Start depth (loggers): 227.7 m
End depth (loggers): 241.5m (at 7pm, evening shift continues)

A good start to the drilling shifts today with no significant issues and 14 metres drilled by 7 pm, with the evening shift still underway until 11 pm. Chris P and Mingxia have joined the ice core processing shifts from today and we’ve started moving full boxes of ice cores into the buried storage container.

Members of the traverse crew are preparing to travel the 40 km (about four hours by tractor) to the Beyond EPICA camp tomorrow to help them lift containers onto sleds with our Challenger tractors.

Julius and Chris Y detaching the core barrel as -55˚C ice chips and drill fluid run from the outer barrel. Insulated and heated tanks for melting out and separating the drill fluid from the ice are in the background. Photo: Joel Pedro

A woman shaving a thin sliver of ice from an ice core.

A woman using a circular saw to cut an ice core.

7 January

Location: Dome C North (DCN)—MYIC Inland Station, 75.0422°S, 123.6312°E, 3239 m asl.

Weather at DCN: • -25˚C, snow showers, winds: SE 140˚, 9 knots • Forecast for next 24 hours: Mostly cloudy. Winds: S/SW 5/10 knots. Min/Max: -31/-23 °C

Inland Station Operations, Science, Drilling

Start depth (loggers): 241.5 m
End depth (loggers): 256.6 m (at 7pm, evening shift continues)

We are part way through the second day of shift drilling and have passed 250 metres drill depth, and 100 metres drilled since starting on Boxing day. We continue to work through some issues today with poor penetration and short runs. Getting consistent runs and core quality is a fine balance between cutting pitch, anti-toque settings, chip transport, fluid levels, cutter and dog sharpness and multiple other factors. On writing, the evening shift have just pulled up a nice 2.85 metre core.

Four members of the traverse crew drove four hours to Beyond EPICA camp today and helped them move containers onto sleds using the Challenger crane. The assistance was much appreciated. It is good to be able to give back to the Beyond EPICA project who have assisted us scientifically and logistically in our own deep drilling project.

Our first Basler flight to return ice cores to cold storage in Casey is scheduled tomorrow. It will bring in 1000 kg of cargo and return the first 100 metres of core (pending weather).

A woman stands beside a wooden bench on which sits three metre-long ice cores. — Mingxia Lai with a rack of cores ready to transport to the core processing tent. Photo: Joel Pedro

A man holding an apple core in one hand and giving a thumbs up to a large plate of chocolate chip biscuits on a table in front of him.

Two tractors use their cranes to lift a shipping container on to a sled.

8 January, 2026

Location: Dome C North (DCN)—MYIC Inland Station, 75.0422°S, 123.6312°E, 3239 m asl.

Weather at DCN: • -23˚C, mostly cloudy, S/SW 5-10 knots • Forecast for next 24 hours: Partly cloudy. Winds: S/SW 10/15 knots. Min/Max: -32/-24 °C

Inland Station Operations, Science, Drilling

Start depth (loggers): 256.6 m
End depth (loggers): 279.6 m
23 m drilled

We were up early this morning to load the first 100 m of ice core onto a sled for transport to Concordia and retro to Casey by Basler.

The cores went smoothly behind our snow groomer and were loaded with help from Concordia to Basler JKB. But part way into the flight we got a call that fog was coming in at the Casey Skiway and that the flight would need to return to Concordia.

Riccardo Scipinotti, Station Leader at Concordia, quickly arranged that the cores would be unloaded and stored in one of their balloon trenches at -50˚C. So that is where they lay for the night, which is happy place for ice cores – with thank you, Concordia. The flight home to Casey is now planned tomorrow, weather permitting. Good to have friends in high cold places.

We drilled 23 m today, which is our record for the season. One we are keen to improve on in the next days as we gain more experience with the drill system. Today each shift made a filtering run to remove chips and cuttings from the borehole, we feel this is helping with consistent runs. Chippy Dave has made a ply hot box which the Andy has connected to a 5kW heater, this will be running soon to help clean and dry out the hollow shaft and chip pump. We reckon this will also help our ability to clear chips and improve drilling.

A sled loaded with ice cores inside a tunnel. A man is standing near a Hagglunds vehicle at the other end of the tunnel.

Ice cores are unloaded from a Basler aircraft on to a sled pulled by a red oversnow vehicle at Concordia station.

This content was last updated 4 days ago on 6 January 2026.