After more than one year of intense preparations and extensive delays, we are finally taking off to the Roter Kamm. The 4-5 million year old impact crater and the Aurus clay pan close by are located in Southern Namibia inside the Sperrgebiet – one of the most remote places on earth.

We are a large team of 15 members from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, the institute of Geophysics and Meteorology in Cologne (A02/D07), our colleagues from the TUBAF in Freiberg plus our collaborators from the Geological Survey and the University of Namibia. For 22 days we will be living close to the Roter Kamm, cooking on fire and gas, sleeping in tents and working outside.

The extensive geophysical survey required us to ship roughly 1.6T and 6 cube-meter equipment from Cologne and the GFZ-Potsdam to Windhoek. We are using a bunch of different geophysical methods to optimally explore the Roter Kamm and the Aurus Clay Pan from shallow depth of ~5 m down to ~ 600 m. Two electromagnetic methods (TEM, AMT) and reflection/refraction Seismics shall provide sufficient depth and spatial resolution. All methods are capable of identifying sedimentary thickness and architecture, though each method has different strengths. Seismics is superior in resolving internal sedimentary structures, wheras TEM and AMT have a superior and large investigation depth. Besides, we are going to core the upper most few meters on both sites to investigate specific sediment composition and subrecnt sedimentation rates.

The geophysical and geological data shall reveal the potential of both sites for deep drilling operations in the 3^rd CRC phase to shed new light on long term Cenozoic climate development of the Namib desert.

After almost a week of rest in Antofagasta and reorganizing our logistics, we finally returned to the claypan last Sunday to continue our challenging drilling operation. As soon as we arrived back, the mystery of the footprints was revealed: a new member was added to our camp, a cute dog we named Dusty. Nobody knows where it came from, but now it stays with us in our small village to protect us during the night.

The limitations to reach further depths with the Sonic drilling and the switching to Diamond drilling brought lots of changes. A complete new set of trucks, tools and also a new crew of drillers were introduced to us. Larger modifications in the drilling equipment were necessary and the whole setup was completed on Tuesday morning.

The new drilling technique made it easily through the rocky transition zone at around 50 meters that was also visible in the seismic data. However instead of fine-grained material we found coarse sediments with large boulders, evidence of the early fluvial history of the basin. The Diamond drilling increased the speed of work drastically, allowing us to get deeper into the claypan with an average progress of 30-40 meters per day and with 100 % core recovery. After three full days of work we dug another 110 meters reaching 160 meters depth and are looking forward to find the boundary to the crystalline basement predicted by geophysics anytime soon.

In the meantime, the Sonic crew got their gear ready to move out of the claypan and into their new destination. But before leaving, our cook Ivan prepared a great “asado” as a goodbye for the old crew and a welcome of the new one. We took the chance to take a few group pictures with the sonic drillers and the scientists to remember our time together and the great job they did to recover this paleoclimatic treasure.

The third week in the Paranal claypan started with promising results. We continued working at Hole 1B, and after passing a critical tephra around 30 meters, the drilling continued smoothly. We made great progress, reaching around 50 meters in only five days! However, at a depth of about 52 meters things got complicated. We hit another thick tephra layer, this time accompanied by a layer with large pebbles and cobbles (>10 cm). Unfortunately, this   stopped any further progress with the sonic drilling system. Hence, we were forced to change to a rotary drilling system made for hard rocks which in theory will allow us to dig deeper into the early history of the Paranal claypan and recover the remaining 100 meters of sediments until the bedrock.

Since the new machinery had to be sent from La Serena, 1000 km away from us, we took advantage of these transition days to go back to Antofagasta for a few days to enjoy a well-deserved rest from the wind and the dust. It was also the perfect timing so the drilling team could have their scheduled resting period before resuming the work. We also used this time to do some necessary logistics and got stocked up with the materials that will be used in the new drilling phase.

Although the Atacama Desert is known to be the driest desert on Earth, some plants and animals are well adapted to these conditions. The footprints of a fox in the loose dust in the morning are a clear sign that also the local inhabitants are interested in our drilling operation. Maybe we are a tasty option on the menu for this little buddy?

While we were in Antofagasta our scientific team grew by one with the arrival of the PhD student Barbara Vargas Machuca, who works in the project A02. Besides helping with the drilling operations, Barbara will also use her stay to sample the sparse local vegetation around the claypan and surface sediments. After our reports of a rain event a couple of few weeks ago, Barbara is highly motivated to learn more about her study area and to see if the precipitation causes any desert blooming.