This trip was to kick off the season by installing the mass balance probe, wind turbine, and radiometers above, inside and beneath the ice. Straight-forward although quite a bit to do, in particular since we had a core barrel smaller than usual. We, that is Josh Jones, Kaiti Ott and myself, spent 5 days on the ice from like 30 minutes after civil twilight in the morning through like 30 minutes before civil twilight in the afternoon. Fieldwork is clearly possible even a week or two before sunrise. However, we used a portable shop light to increase working comfort, warm up equipment, and increase the surface definition on a white-out day. It was literally impossible so see snow dunes otherwise. The ice was quite thick at 0.8 m and the snow cover was substantial — not really surprising considering the ice was in place since mid November 2009.
