In the forests of Fox, Alaska, carved into a frozen hillside is a unique manmade 350-meter long research tunnel. Situated on a 16-acre parcel near the confluence of Goldstream and Glenn Creeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory’s Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility was excavated deep into a large block of discontinuous permafrost that has been going through several recent periods of expansion.
The expansion project began back in 2011, taking advantage of the digging seasons when the ground is at its coldest, with an overall project goal of expanding the tunnel facility to better support ongoing and growing research and engineering needs. The most recent expansion effort, this year, has added 300-feet of new tunnel, improved 200 feet of the existing tunnel and added links between the old and new tunnel sections at several locations, to include at an interface between subsurface bedrock and overlying gravels.