Slide on Down
Head to the far end of the station, go down five flights of stairs and through two doors. You’ll see a slide leading to a dark hole. You’ve found the infamous South Pole Tunnels.
The Tunnels sit 60 feet below the station and stretch for 1800 feet. This is where the water and sewage infrastructure is housed. The Facilities Manager, named Weeks, gives us a tour.
It’s cold – the temperature hovers around -60F, the average ambient temperature of the ground here. The walls, the floor, the ceiling are all ice.
You can see the marks in the wall where the chainsaw has carved away ice. Each year, the ice closes in on the tunnel another few inches; a crew goes through with a chainsaw to carve it back in order to keep the tunnel open. The farther we walk into the tunnel, the tighter it gets – the crew can only carve so far each season.
Shrines
We pass several small “display cases” carved out of the wall. In each is a shrine. There are no rules as to who can build a shrine or what can be in a shrine. More and more pop up every year.
Infrastructure
The station gets it water by melting snow deep below the surface. A Rodriguez Well (more commonly called a Rod Well) drills a column 200 feet down into the ice below the tunnel. Hot water melts out a large cavity, approximately 180 feet wide and 200 feet deep. Some of that water is pumped back up to the station for washing dishes, showering, and drinking, the rest of the water gets re-circulated in order to continue the cycle of melting.
Of course, it’s important that the water is melted from the cleanest ice. For this reason, rod wells are always drilled in the Clean Air Sector. This sector is upwind from the station, so none of the pollution from the power plant contaminates this ice.
Each Rod Well lasts about 15 years at which point a new Rod Well needs to be drilled. Several tunnels have already been dug out to support the replacement of Rod Wells for the next 60 years. These side tunnels are closed off with ice blocks until they’re ready for use.
So what happens after a Rod Well has expired? Well you’re left with an empty cavity deep in the ice. This is where the sewage goes. It takes about 3 years for all of the sewage to freeze in the cavity since there’s so much biological activity going on. The now sewage-filled cavity is sealed off, never to be opened again. Yuck!
Safety Features
There are a few things necessary to make these tunnels safer for the people who work in them on a daily basis. After all, it is -60F and 60 feet below the surface.
First, before entering the Tunnels, you must radio into Communications to “check out.” Afterwards, when you check back in, they know everyone is safe.
Second, there are ladders along the way providing emergency exit routes up to the surface.
Finally, partially for safety and partially for comfort, a warming shed has been constructed in the Tunnels. This insulated, wooden shed contains an electric heater, first aid kit, and some munchies. Indeed it is fairly warm (relatively) when I step into it. Such a relief!
Finding Our Way Out
After an hour touring The Tunnels, it’s time to find our way out. But before we go, Weeks has one last surprise for us – he turns out the lights. With absolutely no sunlight at this depth, it is nearly pitch black (with the exception of a few, small, red safety lights). It’s an eerie feeling, a perfect setting for a Halloween haunted house.
With the lights back on, we follow the well-marked path squeezing around pipes and stepping over sleds full of ice blocks. As we crawl up the slide, the air gets warmer and the unpleasant odor starts to fade. We’ve made it through our first trip to The Tunnels.
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