legends · 3 min read ·
Thaw
A glaciology team's borehole stops at a person lying in clear ice, wearing the current season's parka.
**Nordvik Glaciological Station — Core Log, Borehole 6**
**Team:** 5 (Ames, Brandt, Kessler, Ito, Varga) · **Season:** summer, week 3 · **Drill:** thermal, 12 cm bore
- **Depth (m) · Description**
- 0–14 · Firn, white, bubbly
- 14–31 · Dense ice, clear, some dust bands
- 31–52 · Ice with volcanic ash layer at 44 m
- 52–58 · Clear ice, bubbles absent
- 58–61 · **Obstruction. Drill stopped.**
*Note: the drill stopped at 58 m and the motor load spiked, as it does at rock. The retrieved bit showed no scratches. A fragment of material was stuck to the cutter: woven, dark blue, synthetic.*
· · ·
**Photo register (Station camera, 21 July)**
IMG_4402 — Team on the ice at BH6, 09:12. Ames, Brandt, Kessler, Ito, Varga. All in orange parkas.
IMG_4403 — Core tray, 52–58 m section. Clear ice.
IMG_4410 — Drill winch. Cable rewound to 0 m.
IMG_4418 — The hole after the drill was withdrawn. Meltwater at the surface, 6 cm. A dark thing visible at depth, below the water.
· · ·
**Station log (Kessler, 22 July)**
We used the hot-water probe to widen the hole. At 58 m the obstruction is a person.
I want to put that in the log plainly, so that nobody later has to wonder how I meant it. At 58 m, in clear ice, there is a human being lying on their side, with their knees drawn up. They are wearing an orange parka, the same cut as ours, with the station's patch on the shoulder. The patch is bright. The ice around them is perfect.
We cannot see the face. The head is turned away, toward the wall of the bore. The hood is up.
· · ·
**Station log (Ames, 23 July)**
We have been taking turns on the probe. Varga thinks it is one of the old overwinterers, from the 1970s expedition, but the parka is wrong for that. It is the current issue. It has the zip pull Ito replaced last week, a red cord, tied in a knot that I know, because I tie it that way.
Brandt says this isn't possible. The ice at 58 m is two thousand years old.
The ice is two thousand years old. The parka was issued in April.
· · ·
**Station log (Ito, 25 July)**
We have decided not to bring it up. The probe has been withdrawn. We are going to cut a section of ice around the person's hand and ship it to the lab. The hand is bare, unlike the rest, and is not holding anything.
I have photographed my own left hand next to the sample for scale, for the record. The hand in the ice has a pale band on the ring finger, where a ring has been worn for years and recently removed. So has mine.
· · ·
**Laboratory report (Polar Sciences Institute, 18 August)**
Sample received: ice block, 18 × 14 × 9 cm, containing a human hand and wrist to the level of the cuff.
Tissue: well preserved, no decomposition. Fingerprints recoverable and matched to station staff records. Match: **Ito, K., station technician.** Probability of match: above the laboratory's reporting ceiling.
Age of ice surrounding the sample: 2,010 years (± 40).
Age of tissue (radiocarbon): the instrument could not report a value. The reading was negative. Recorded in the log as 0.0, and flagged by the laboratory as *instrument error.*
· · ·
**Station log (Varga, 20 August)**
Ito has left the team. The Institute has asked that Ito not be allowed back on the ice. Ito says that is fine. Ito says Ito has no need to go back, since Ito is already there, and is lying on one side with knees drawn up, in clear ice, facing the wall of the bore, as comfortable as anyone has ever been.
We have closed Borehole 6. The cap is in place, with a plate: *BH6, depth 61 m, do not reopen.* Next season the ice will have moved a few metres. It will carry the cap with it, and whatever is underneath, slowly and without effort, toward the sea.