The PrairieDog: a double-barrel coring drill for ‘hand’ augering

The PrairieDog is a double-barreled ice corer designed to enable more efficient drilling – better core quality, fewer trips in and out of the borehole, easier breaks from the hole bottom, better chip collection and less energy to turn – than a simple single core barrel that accompanies most ‘hand’ ice-coring drill systems. Over several seasons, the PrairieDog has been used to drill about 50 holes to an average depth of about 20 m. It is safe to use in warm ice where a simple core-auguring barrel could easily become stuck. For a 20m hole, about five trips in and out of the borehole are saved using the PrairieDog compared with a simple auger barrel of the same core length. With fiberglass inner and outer barrels and an anti-torque section composed primarily of aluminum, the PrairieDog weighs only about 25 lb (11.3 kg).