I first heard about the Ice Tunnels in Werner Herzog's movie, Encounters at the End of the World. I was intrigued. There are thousands of feet of tunnels carved out under the ice below the South Pole? Were they made by winter-overs crazy from isolation? Were they secret passages? Was there really a sturgeon down there and why?
I was thrilled when Andy Martinez, station manager here, volunteered to take a few of us down into the ice tunnels on his day off, no less.
Andy Martinez gives us the talk.
He cleared up a few of my misconceptions right away. The tunnels are used to service the rodwells that provide water to the station and once melted to a less than efficient to use volume they are pumped dry and then filled up with waste. A rodwell is an onion-shaped melted volume in the ice more than 50 meters below the surface. The station is on its second rodwell right now, we pump hot water down into it to get it going then circulate hot water to keep it melted. Over time the bulb expands and expands until it's gets so big it's not efficient to keep circulating hot water through it. Eventually that means the well is retired and a new one is started.
So in the tunnel are a few tubes, mainly waste tubes. Waste is carried from the station down into the empty rodwell to be stored there. That's it. There it stays. The waste must stay insulated so it stays thawed. A frozen waste pipe would be a big problem.
The walls are pushing in, slowly, due to pressure from the ice. In less than ten years they're going to need a solution to that problem.
Into the tunnels we go
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Ice crystals have formed everywhere from the humidity leaking out of the waste rodwell.
The tunnels are were originally made by two miners from Colorado using a chainsaw. One of their helmets is still down there with their signatures on it. Later the man-sized tunnels were hollowed out further with a big machine. The final tunnels are 6 feet wide by 10 feet high. Tunnels were cut to accommodate future rodwell sites, although only two exist now. In the spare tunnel arms, South Pole visitors have left shrines and mementos. Those, along with beautiful crystals and the coldest temperatures I've ever felt--it's a steady -50F down there-- made the Ice Tunnel tour one to remember!
It's icy cold down here!My Cold Face.
The shrines are plentiful:
Heavy Carps sign means carpenters were here.The first elevated station crew left this shrine.Transformers shrine.I think this guy is made out of bread. Whatever it is, he's pretty creepy.Pope on a rope shrine.The original chainsaw miners signed this helmet.My favorite, the sturgeon shrine.
This sturgeon was a gift from some Russians from Vostock to residents at McMurdo. It stayed there for a year until it was thrown out, then a polie rescued it and brought it to its final resting place here in the tunnels.
A Kiwi shrine to New Zealand.
Firefighters shrine.A shrine to off ice adventure.
Finally, we made it to the very end of the tunnels.
It's very low temperature, that's for sure.
Thanks again to Andy Martinez for his time and expertise. We really had a terrific time!
IceCubers in the mist! L to R: Martin, Mike, Ben, Matthias, Bakhtiyar, and Katey
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