The Allan Hills ice coring team has safely returned home, and the airborne team is packing up and preparing to leave Antarctica.

This week I-187 (COLDEX) wrapped up ice coring and related projects at Allan Hills. Our 24 cm diameter ice core near the ice margin at Allan Hills reached a depth of 144 m.

Happy New Year! The COLDEX ice coring team at Allan Hills is wrapping up coring operations and preparing to head back to McMurdo Station. We have made great progress in our work at South Pole, with six survey flights launched over the last eight days.

Both COLDEX field teams are making excellent progress, with the Allan Hills team focusing on coring with the Blue Ice Drill and the airborne team arriving at South Pole, ready to start surveys.

This week was a busy one, where taking advantage of beautiful weather we completed the full up testing of our instruments and declared readiness for survey.

The Eclipse drilling in the Cul de Sac begain again, and as of this past weekend the team had reached 73 m.

This week, the two COLDEX teams, one at the South Pole and one at Allan Hills, each made important progress while working through various challenges.

It has been a busy week for COLDEX at Allan Hills! After an initial put-in team arrived at the site last Friday (Nov 17), camp structures were erected in between high winds and low temperatures with wind chills in the -50C range.

The COLDEX I-187 Allan Hills team has spent the last 10 days or so working through the required trainings in McMurdo Station that then allow them to move on to establishing the shallow ice core drilling camp at Allan Hills.

I can say with some authority that the majority of us were stunned by the level of information that can be gleaned from a careful study of the ice core record.

Earlier this year in June, a group of scientists of varying career stages from six different institutions arrived at National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Lakewood, Colorado for two weeks. The goal? To unbox, unpack, process, and cut Antarctic ice cores drilled from the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area in 2022-2023 and earlier field seasons for a multitude of different measurements.

A team of eight people – camp manager, two ice core drillers, five scientists – spent nearly 6 weeks at the Allan Hills blue ice area from December 2022 into early January 2023. They recovered two ice cores. One is a large-diameter (9.5”) borehole to 96 m depth at a site where 2.7 million year old ice has been previously recovered.

All three COLDEX research teams have successfully completed their 2022-2023 field seasons.

The Elephant Moraine trip was a success, recovering a 9 meter ice core at this site where previous samples taken by Korean colleagues indicate ice dating to between 400,000 and 1,000,000 years old.

All COLDEX teams send thoughts of peace and happiness to all for the holidays, and are grateful to have everyone’s support both on the ice and back home.