Light at end of a long, dark tunnel for Chile's 33 trapped miners

Mining minister Laurence Golborne said they hoped “to have at least one of our miners on the surface” this morning.

Nearby, the miners’ families have been holding vigil at a place called “Camp Hope.”

“Here the tension is higher than down below. Down there they are calm,” said Veronica Ticona, sister of 29-year-old Ariel Ticona, a trapped rubble-removal machine operator.

After 68 days of shared fears and jitters – all of it under the close scrutiny of the world’s media – the early fellowship has frayed. Some relationships, once at least cordial, are as hostile as the desolate sands of the surrounding Acatama desert.

The feuds and jealousies within families centred on such matters as who got to take part in weekend video conferences with the miners, who received letters and why – or even who should speak to the media and how much they should be revealing about a family’s interior life.

Some relatives complained about distant kin seeking the international media limelight, giving interviews about trapped miners they barely know.

There were even fights over who constitutes a close relative – or even a miner’s preferred conjugal companion.

So Alberto Iturra, the chief of the psychology team advising the trapped men, decided that after each miner rides an escape capsule to daylight, the rescued man will meet with between one and three people whom the miner has personally designated.

Aware of the emotional toll, Mr Iturra recommended that the relatives leave the mine, go home and get some rest.

“I explained to the families that the only way one can receive someone is to first be home to open the door,” he said.

The dramatic endgame was hastening as the rescuers finished reinforcing the escape shaft on Monday and the 13-foot rescue chamber descended flawlessly nearly all the way to the trapped men in a series of test runs.

The Phoenix I capsule – the biggest of three built by Chilean navy engineers – made its first test runs after the top 180 feet of the shaft were lined with steel pipe.

Then the empty capsule was winched down 2,000 feet, just 40 feet short of the shaft system that has been the miners’ refuge since the August 5 roof collapse that trapped them.

“We didn’t send it (all the way) down because we could risk that someone will jump in,” a grinning Mr Golborne said earlier.

Officials had drawn up a secret list of which miners should come out first, but the order could change after paramedics and a mining expert first descend in the capsule to evaluate the men and oversee the journey upward.