IN THE NEWS: PROFILES
INTO THE WILD BLUE SNOW
Some things never change, no matter which end of the earth--or thermometer--you're at
by Virginia Stuart
It was perfect barbecuing weather, for the South Pole. The temperature was a summery 40 degrees below zero. Although it was 4 a.m., the sun was bright, as it is around the clock there in December. Chris Williams and his companions were having a midsummer barbecue on a two-mile thick layer of snow and ice that stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction.
"We were cooking the steaks on the barbecue, standing around in all these weird clothes,"Williams recalls. The weird clothes consisted of a smooth layer of polypropylene, a fuzzy layer of polypropylene, a ski suit, an outer layer of pants and down jacket with a fur-lined hood, and mukluks with 1 1/2-inch-thick soles. Williams and his coworkers were taking a break after working 20-hour days tunneling into the hard-packed snow or "firn"beneath the Antarctic surface.
A 1990 graduate of the electrical engineering technology program, Williams now works as an electronics engineer at the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in Hanover. Last December, he was part of a team of four engineers and technicians who spent 10 days building a 380-foot-long tunnel for the installation of utilities at the South Pole Station maintained by the National Science Foundation.
The 46-foot-deep, unlined tunnel (61/2 feet high by 10 feet wide) was built to handle sewage outfalls at the station, where the population swells to nearly 200 during the Antarctic summer. But it was also built as a "test of concept,"to try out a new tunneling technique using a machine designed specifically for digging through the densely packed firn.
Williams's role in the project was to maintain and modify electrical components of the system and to do everyday work‹digging the tunnel and repairing whatever broke down, mechanical or electrical. Like anyone working hard during the summertime, Williams did get overheated. One day, the temperature was minus 121 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chill. After working outside for a while, he recalls, "we went down into the tunnel, and I had to take my first layer of clothes off because I was too hot‹and the tunnel was minus 42."
Despite the harsh conditions and long days, however, the work did have its rewards. For one thing the firn they were digging through is no ordinary snow. "Imagine tiny glass beads all frozen together,"he explains. "That's what it's like. It starts off as snow and then it starts transforming as pressure is applied and temperature affects it."When the sun shone through those tiny glass beads near the entrance to the tunnel, the effect was stunning. "It turns a real Caribbean blue,"Williams says.
Ultimately, similar tunnels may be excavated at the pole to allow personnel to move between buildings without going outside. In the meantime, Williams returned to Antarctica in November to work on his latest project‹survivability testing of solar panels. Now a veteran, he has no concerns about returning to the cold summer weather there, because, he says, the dryness in this "desert of snow"makes the cold more bearable. In other words, it's not the cold that gets to us, it's the humidity.
To learn more about CRREL's South Pole Tunneling System, visit its Web site at http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/news/snotun2.htm.