Our hot water drillers have successfully melted a hole through the ice at Crary Ice Rise (CIR) right down 523 metres to the bedrock below! Not an easy task!
CIR is a ‘pinning point’ for the Ross Ice Shelf, a place where it rests directly on top of the seabed below, where it acts like an anchor for the ice shelf, resisting the flow of the ice away from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
The team are now making another pass of the hole with a reamer to widen it to 35 cm diameter.
