Student Researchers in Greenland

ALTHOUGH Harvard men and Yalies like to think of Dartmouth as being in the northern wilderness, Hanover represented the balmy south to four Dartmouth students last summer. For more than two months Stephen Zeller '66, Robert Sauer '66, Michael McKenna '65, and George Linkletter '65 lived and worked at Camp Century, Greenland, the U. S. Army's famous ice-cap research station.

The U. S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, with headquarters in Hanover, is the unit of the Army Materiel Command which is concerned with the scientific and engineering investigation of the arctic and sub-arctic areas of the world. Working out of the modern Hanover lab, the large staff of civilian researchers now conducts active field programs in Alaska, Greenland, and the Antarctic.

Each summer a number of students from various colleges are hired by CRREL on a contract basis to assist in the field program. Students in geology, chemistry, physics, and engineering are assigned to a particular project which will give them an opportunity to be actively engaged in a research project within their sphere of interest.

Approximately ten young men are given the opportunity to work at Camp Century each summer. Students are generally required to report to Hanover for a briefing before they leave for Greenland. Men involved in Greenland research leave the United States at McGuire AFB, Wrightstown, N. J. MATS flies them, along with their equipment, into Thule AFB, Greenland.

The four Dartmouth men at Camp Century during the summer of 1965 were involved in three separate projects. Sauer, an engineering science major, worked on a project which is developing better techniques for building various types of structures on and under the snow. Steve Zeller conducted a seismological program to obtain a better profile of the ice cap and to enable scientists to locate objects deep within the ice. McKenna, a graduate in chemistry, and Linkletter, who majored in geology, were part of a multi-phased glaciological project which included deep ice-core analysis, micrometeorite collections, and carbon dating of ice.

Linkletter took with him a DOC flag that had previously been flown by Dartmouth men at Little America in the Antarctic. The Greenland group flew the flag at Camp Century and returned it to John Rand '3B in Hanover.

Camp Century is located 150 miles inland from Thule at an elevation of 6800 feet. At this point the ice cap is about 4700 feet thick and it is this mass of ice and snow that brings men to Century. Since the 750,000 square-mile ice cap is swept by violent storms, the facilities at Camp Century are built under the sur- face. In 1959 and 1960 tunnels were cut into the snow and buildings were installed within the tunnels for living and working quarters. The subsurface network is lighted and the buildings are heated electrically, the power being supplied by diesel generators. Thus work can go on no matter what the weather is like on the surface. Camp Century is a fantastic place and four Dartmouth students gained much from their experience there.

Mike McKenna '65 and Bob Sauer '66 (infront) and Steve Zeller '66 and GeorgeLinkletter '65 (rear) with the D.O.C. flagonce flown in the Antarctic.

McKenna hand boring an ice sample in aman-made well about 180 feet below thesurface at the Army's Camp Century.