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Code
SB17.23
Season
2017
Narrative

Today the entire survey team: Ian, Alan, Chris, and Karen remained at Mirak all day to help me with the trench as well as to map the site and my Datums with the GNSS. We began with the exterior of the room taking down what soil was remaining outside of the room in the 1 meter expansion. This small patch of lighter soil was called Locus 13 until we reached bedrock which came as suspected just where it had been in the original 3x3 trench in the N corner. We removed a few floating stones in this area and cleaned and swept the bedrock. While the rest of the team used the GNSS to shoot in the four corners and datums of Mirak Operations 01 and 02, I was able to shoot in the points for all four corners and the datum for Mirak Operation 03. After this our focus was twofold: Clean all the bedrock outside of the trench as well as identify small stones on the NW side of the Locus 02 wall we could remove and remove stones in the interior of the room and continue to descend where possible. Ian and a two of my workers focused on cleaning up the bedrock along the NW side of the trench to reveal a distinct cut into the bedrock behind the wall. Chris also focused on cleaning the newly revealed space between bedrock and the wall (this resulted in the expansion of Locus 06 towards the North. It will need to be measured and given new bottom depth tomorrow) and removing collapsed wall stones to reveal the large stones of the emerging wall better. In the interior of the room we removed as many stones as possible that we could identify as erosion and collapse in Loci 11 and 07. Once the stones were out of the way we were able to open up Locus 14 under Locus 11 and Locus 15 under Locus 07. Locus 14 ended at a soil change at which point we decided to also end Locus 15 to keep the two Loci even. While Locus 14 ended in a lighter soil change, Locus 15 did not. Furthermore, material densities were much higher in Locus 15 than they were in Locus 14. The work of pulling the rocks and going down with Loci 11, 07, 14, and 15 revealed quite a nice, several course NW wall. What remains to be exposed is the SW wall of the room. Tomorrow, I need to draw the entire trench, draw the W blaulk of Mirak Operation 03, work on finishing and measuring Locus 06, and opening up two corresponding Loci in the interior of the room: One in the E corner under Locus 14 and one in the S corner under Locus 15). Hopefully the two Loci in the interior will reveal a floor or bedrock.