Open Mining and Construction in Snow and Ice

Open mining and construction involve removing the near-surface layers of snow and ice in such a way that all the operations are performed from the surface. Open workings include pits, trenches, open pits, and intentional glacier thermokarst. This chapter describes the specificities of snow pitting and the possibility of pitting mechanization with large-diameter vibrocorers. Different snow-trenching technologies are classified and compared. The main objective of snow trenches is to construct subsurface roofed shelters for living, working, and technological facilities. However, open trenches are also excavated in snow for short-term use, such as for recovering snow-buried objects and collecting large-volume snow samples. Some considerations for estimations of snow-trench deformations are given. Open pits are constructed to provide access to subglacial orebodies that are completely or partly hidden by glaciers. To date, the only open pit with partially developed ice benches has been excavated in Kumtor, Kyrgyzstan. Water erosion can be effectively used to remove ice overburden to access subglacial ores or other technological tasks. As an example, the parameters of the large-scale ice removal in Berendon Glacier, British Columbia, Canada, via water erosion are provided.