Realising that we were unable to recover the drill safely, we contacted NSF; owner of the drill rig and co-sponsor of our remaining drilling programme.  After deliberations, word came back that they might be able to organise a flight from the South Pole with ethanol.  A second Eclipse drill had also been located in McMurdo, available for us.  Five days after we lost the drill, a Twin Otter aircraft landed at our camp, bringing in the spare drill, 40 litres of ethanol and a little – and much appreciated – box of goodies from the cargo staff at the South Pole.  By email I received good advice from experienced friends in the drilling community – Sigfus in Copenhagen, Jay and Laurent from ICDS at WAIS Divide in West Antarctica.

The Twin Otter landed at 2300, and the night shift – Andreas, Tom, Stein, Svein and I – went to work immediately; the first step being to get the liquid down to 90 meters and to the drill. This sounds easy – just pour it down the hole, right?  Not so.  The upper 40 meters of the borehole wall is porous and will easily absorb any liquid splashing down in the narrow hole.  What we did was to pour the ethanol slowly down along the cable, one litre at a time till we had 6 litres in.  Meanwhile, we added tension on the cable, and then waited for the ethanol to do its trick. We waited an hour, then tried multiple times to break the ice core and un-stick the drill.  No luck. After 2 hours we put in 4 more litres, and waited again.  No result. 

Over a cup of tea we decided that the liquid was not getting down to the drill, but more likely sprayed off the tangles on the cable down in the hole.  Svein again put his ingenuity to work, and again he came up with a plan: A one litre plastic bottle with a screw cap, one hole in the bottom and one in the cap, and a 90 meter cord attached to it with a big knot half way inside and a small knot stuck in the cap hole. We filled the bottle with alcohol, sent it cap first all the way down the hole, gave the cord a yank – and the knot on the bottle cap pulled through, letting the liquid run out right on top of the drill.  After 4 runs we had 4 litres of ethanol right where we needed it.

The rest was waiting – for an hour, and then we gradually applied tension to the cable.  First we tried to winch up the drill.  No luck.  I felt like we needed a bit more pull power so Stein rigged a pulley system directly over the hole and we hooked on to Chinook’s crane.  By pulling straight up out of the hole over the course of an hour we had about 400 kg on the cable.  I figured one of two things were going to happen: the drill was going to come loose or the cable was going to break – again.  But at 0705 on Friday morning, the crane suddenly went slack with a slight slurping sound. It had broken free!!

We quickly re-attached the cable to the pulley system, hooked the cable to the vehicle and started to drive.  From 92 meters down the hole the drill arrived at the surface completely drenched in ethanol slush, but unharmed.  AH   EEEEEEEEEE!!!!

The “12th century fish hook with its catch, sitting in suspense over the plywood covered bore hole 3,3 meters below the snow surface. Photo: Lou Albershardt