A SHORT GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL
ALPINE TERMS.
Arête.—A ridge either of rock, ice, or snow, or combinations of all three.
Bergschrund.—The crevasse or deep moat almost invariably found between the sides and upper portions of a glacier or ice slope and the rocks above, or the permanent clinging ice above, as the case may be. Of late the meaning of the term has become extended, and almost any crevasse in the upper parts of a glacier with one lip higher than the other comes under the designation.
Col.—Saddle, or dip in a ridge.
Cornice.—The overhanging edge of an arête caused by drifting snow.
Couloir.—A ditch or deep gully in the mountain-side; in the upper regions being usually floored with ice and swept by avalanches.
Crevasse.—The rent caused by fracture of the ice under tension.
Gendarme, or rock tower.—A mass of rock on the crest of an arête.
Moraine.—The accumulation of detritus which has fallen from the mountains on to the ice and is carried down upon it.
Névé, or firn.—Snow in a transition stage between snow and ice. The large fields of this feeding a glacier are spoken of as the névés of the glacier.
Séracs.—Blocks of ice broken into polyhedral masses (mostly cubic) by the body of the ice being crevassed in various lines of fracture. So called from the resemblance the blocks bear to a certain kind of cheese.
Shale slips and shingle and boulder fans are of very common occurrence in the New Zealand mountains and are caused by the discharge of detritus down couloirs, from which when emerging it spreads out into fan-shaped slopes.
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