Today was the most glorious sunny day, really the perfect day for fieldwork. And a long day to take advantage of it – we took a packed lunch and were out for eleven hours, only just making it back (a bit late) for dinner. The sun was out, the sky was blue, there was no wind and it was almost warm, we could not have asked for more. So what did we do? We drilled twelve holes with the jiffy drill, finishing with the hand drill (hard work as over 1.7m of ice in some places!), took water chemistry profiles at 10cm intervals to the bottom of the lake (a bit chilly as you have to sit still holding the probe for over an hour), collected water samples from different depths of the water column, measured ice and snow thickness, and enjoyed a packed lunch in the sun (including Antarctic crushed ice fruit slush – remember slush puppies? Not sure why they were called that but perhaps this should be named an Antarctic slush penguin..?), and biscuits and tea in the afternoon. All in all a very successful days work. And enjoyable too. Plus it was a good work out to burn off some of the recent dulce de leche diet.