Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 11/10/2009 - 10:38
Forums
Ice Core Drilling in West Antarctica

Hi from Mound Valley Grade School in Mound Valley, Kansas. Our Question is what is a tunnel cut? Blake,Sami,Kara

Fri, 11/27/2009 - 00:51

Heidi Roop

Hello Mound Valley!
 Your question is a little bit outside the procedures we use in our ice core drilling. As far as I know, a tunnel cut is a horizontal cut, drilled at depth but parallel to the surface. We only drill vertically, down the borehole. However, you'll be interested to know that once we finish our entire 3500 meter ice core, we are going back to "replicate" certain sections we're interested in. This means putting another drill down the hole and deflecting it, pushing it to one side of the hole, and drilling a new path at a very slight angle. This will slowly make a secondary borehole that we will re-enter several times to retrieve "replicate ice cores."
 Thanks for your interest! Maybe you can look up projects that are doing horizontal tunnel cutting---there is a project on the Taylor Glacier which is doing this.
 Stay warm!
-Peter (WAIS Divide core handler)