Today was a beautiful day with sun and little wind. We even talked about it being so warm (all relative, it must have still been hovering around zero). Perfect weather for fieldwork so we spent the day setting up the harness and testing the ice thickness at Lake Mateus with the hand drill. It was hard going but the good news is the ice is up to one metre thick. Even with all the asado and dulce de leche that we’ve been eating we won’t go through that in a hurry. Before we can start drilling a core hole we need to determine the best point to take our core. We want the deepest point where the most sediment should have accumulated.

We had a local visitor at the lake today. A lonely lost Adelie penguin which came running and skidding across the lake towards us, obviously on a mission. It stopped next to me before running off again towards Steve and the ice drill in the middle of the lake and stopped next to him, observing him for a while. Then it called out, quickly turned around and set off waddling back from where it had come from. So exciting is lake coring on the ice that even the local wildlife wants to come and join in! We took advantage of the good weather and had a long day in the field, only just making it back in time for dinner.