A smooth-walled path to daylight awaited 33 trapped miners Sunday as they entered the tense final hours of a two-month odyssey christened in the terror of collapsing rock deep under a Chilean mountain.

In this still image taken from a video released by the government of Chile on Oct 10, 2010, steel pipes are welded as rescue efforts continue to free the trapped miners at the San Jose mine near Copiapo, Chile, Oct 10, 2010. [Agencies]

With the eyes of the world on Chile's no-expense-spared effort to ensure all the men emerge unharmed, the miners' physical and mental health was being fastidiously monitored. Precautions were taken against all manner of complications — aspirin to prevent blood clots, a special drink to settle the stomach, video monitors to watch for panic attacks. 

And officials said the men were so giddy with confidence they were squabbling on Saturday, the day drills broke through to them, over who would get to be the last to take a twisting, 20-minute ride the half-mile up to a rock-strewn desert moonscape and into the embrace of those they love.

A tentative but secret list was drafted of which miners should come out first when the extraction begins, probably on Wednesday. But Health Minister Jaime Manalich said the otherwise cooperative miners were so sure of the exit plan that they were arguing about sequence.

"They were fighting with us yesterday because everyone wanted to be at the end of the line, not the beginning," he told reporters.

Manalich told The Associated Press that a few had volunteered in conversations among themselves to go up first. But none had volunteered publicly, he said.