27 January 2017 The Tunnels

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. The top pipe is for water, the bottom for sewage.

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.

A chilly -60F inside the Tunnels.

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.

A sled full of ice blocks that were carved out of the walls. Removing these blocks from the walls keeps the tunnels from getting too narrow.

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.

The first shrine we came across featured a tub of ice cream (still full). In Winter 2012, there was a shortage of vanilla ice cream, so the last tub was enshrined in the Tunnels. For all you My Little Pony fans out there, there's a shrine dedicted to this in the Tunnels. This shrine features a (pretty creepy) sculpture. Weeks told us that this head used to sit in one of the side tunnels which are much darker and creepier than the main one. Imagine turning on the lights and seeing this! During some special event here, there happened to be a professional cake decorator who made this gorgeous cake. It was so well-done, no one wanted to eat it. Thus, was put in this shrine in the Tunnels where it is frozen solid. As a funny twist, since it's been in the Tunnels people have started eating the cake. This shrine features a variety of hand-made puppets that were used to create a video for the SPIFF (South Pole International Film Festival). Each of these puppets is meant to represent the Galley staff at that time.

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.

Martin squeezing his way around the current Rod Well (the yellow column). This Rod Well supplies us with all the water we need on station. Of course, when it takes so much energy and effort to get water, we conserve whenever we can - shorter showers, less laundry, etc. In this cross-section of the water pipe you see two inner pipes, one for water going to the station and one for water returning. Surrounding these inner pipes is thick isulation to help it from freezing. The black wires are heat tracks - current runs through the wires creating excess heat also to keep the water from freezing in the pipes. Inevitably some moisture around the current Rod Well escapes into the air. That moisture condenses and freezes into these beuatiful "frosticles" hanging from the ceiling. They're delicate, but so pretty to look at! Some are more than a foot long!

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.

One of the side tunnels ready for use in the future. For now it's blocked off with ice.

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.

One of the emergency exits from the Tunnels. Another emergency exit accidently got filled in with snow one winter because someone misplaced the lid by an inch.

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!

Weeks showing us how warm and hozy the shed is.

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.

Michael crawling out of the Tunnels in front of me. There's a slide instead of steps as the entrance/exit to the Tunnels so that the sleds full of ice blocks can be pulled out. Did anyone order some white mascara? How about some white hair dye?