Martin's Antarctic Visit  
January 2004  

Patrick A'Hearn and Hajo Eicken about to begin drilling an ice core. An ice core is simply a cylinder of ice that is obtained using an ice corer, or ice coring auger. Our ice corer is basically a tube of plastic, 1 m long with two sharp teeth at one end that cut down into the ice when the ice corer is turned at high speed with the gasoline-powered engine at the top end. It takes about one minute to go down one meter. This is the easy way. I have also drilled many ice cores by hand, a much slower process, but one that keeps you warm and builds upper body strength.

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