Achieving core goals

The difficult and slow journey to the glacier was just the start of the problems for Tian and the team. Among the numerous other issues the expedition encountered were a technical failure of the drilling equipment and the sudden malfunction of two out of the eight ice chests brought to store the samples.

Then, while transporting the ice cores back down from the peak, the team faced drastic changes in the ice and snow at the glacier's terminus. The melting snow forced an alteration to their previously planned route. As a result, the sled carrying the ice cores overturned, resulting in damage to over a dozen samples.

The expedition originally planned to drill one or two holes to the bottom of the glacier to extract samples, but as a result of the loss, the team had to drill another hole.

Despite all of this, 55-year-old Tian never once thought of giving up.

On the 54th day of the expedition, at an elevation of 5,900 meters in the core area of the Purog Kangri Glacier, the team successfully transported the first 211 meters of samples back to the base camp.

Meanwhile, they were currently in the process of extracting the second ice core from what was the third hole.