Eureka! We reached the impact breccia on April 14, 2009, at 6:55 PM at a depth of -315 meters below lake floor. Using the smaller HQ pipe the crew collected over 27 m of laminated fine grained muds representing probably the earliest record of Lake E in the middle Pliocene. Then without any problems the cores started to come up with full recovery of the impact breccia. The entire camp was all smiles and excited about the collective accomplishment and the quality of the cores. The depth of the contact at -315 m is not too far off the earlier estimated depth of 330 m. Phone calls were made to German PI Martin Melles now back in Cologne and Austrian PI Christian Koeberl is on his way to the field camp next week. Russian PI Pavel Minyuk and American PI Julie Brigham-Grette were on site to share thank yous with the drillers and the science crews. Both were part of the original 6-person team who collected the first sediment cores from the lake in 1998. Its been a long journey to reach this day. Nevertheless we are not done yet; drilling into the breccia now continues.