Fast progress was too good to last. Today, Thursday, the drill moved very slowly. The total depth of recovered snow/ice core is now 70 metres. Only near the end of the day did the drilling return to the pace of the previous two days. There was no discernable reason for the delay, except, perhaps, that the snow density is constantly changing as the drill goes down through year after year of densely packed snow.

Now that all supplies have been delivered to the 5 300-metre Prospector-Russell drill camp, there is movement among the teams at the two lower camps. From King Col, Gerry Holdsworth and Kaplan Yalcin have joined Jocelyne Bourgeois and James Zheng at the Quintino Sella camp. Meanwhile, the mobile, snow sampling team of Fritz Koerner, Kumiko Goto-Azuma and Tetsu Yamaski have joined Chris Zdanowicz at the 4,100 metre King Col Camp. This new group will now move up even higher when the weather allows - it is bad right now.