The Selkirk Mountains/Glossary of Mountaineering Terms
GLOSSARY OF MOUNTAINEERING TERMS.
Aiguille—A needle-like rock-tower or pinnacle, isolated from a central mass.
Alpenstock—A long, stout staff, shod with a sharp, steel point, used by mountaineers.
Alps—High (white) mountains, specifically those of Switzerland. As a proper name in the plural, the great mountain ranges in Switzerland and neighbouring countries.
Alps, Alplands—The open grasslands, meadows and flowering slopes on a mountain side. In Switzerland, a pasture on the side of a mountain. (See page 36, Vol. I., No. 1., Canadian Alpine Journal.)
Amphitheatre—A natural circular area, surrounded by rising ground, usually rock or snow-masses.
Arête—The sharp ridge, edge or rocky spur of a mountain; used in connection with snow as well as rock.
Avalanche—Falling bodies of snow or ice, loosened from their hold by the heat of the sun. Sometimes rock.
Berg—The integral rock-mass rising above a snowfield; also, in the absence of snow, above the slopes of debris, or the alplands at its base.
Bergschrund—The crevasse formed between the edge of a body of snow or ice and a rock-berg. One of the chief difficulties to be overcome in mountaineering.
Boulder Clay—A stiff, tenacious clay containing boulders of all sizes; found in the moraines of a glacier; corresponds to "till."
Brule—The charred and fallen remains of a forest fire.
Cache—A hiding place; a store of provisions, etc., hidden for future use.
Canyon (Canon)—A narrow valley, generally with precipitous sides; corresponds to gorge, ravine, defile. Box Canyon—In the Rockies and Selkirks applied to the bed of a stream contained by perpendicular rock-walls.
Cirque—A circle of rock peaks.
Chimney—A steep and narrow rift in the rocks, roughly resembling a household chimney with one side removed.
Chinook—A warm, dry, western wind which frequently blows in the Rocky Mountains. Similar to the Fohn wind of the European Alps.
Col—The crest of a neck or pass between two mountain peaks, usually though not necessarily covered with snow.
Confluent Glacier—One tributary to a trunk-glacier; generally flowing from a greater elevation.
Cornice, Snow-Cornice—An overhanging edge of snow at the crest of a peak or ridge, caused by drifting; ice is formed by the snow thawing and freezing.
Couloir—A steeply ascending gully, gorge, or ravine in the side of a mountain or rock-peak; generally, though not necessarily, filled with snow.
Crack—A rift in the rocks, narrower than a chimney.
Crampon—A steel frame, set with sharp spikes, strapped to the boot to facilitate climbing on ice (climbing irons).
Creek—Name applied in Canada and the United States to small streams. It is also applied in mountain regions to torrents.
Crevasse—A fissure or crack formed in a snow-field or glacier; caused by non-elasticity of the ice when moving down the uneven surface of its rocky bed. Longitudinal crevasses are formed in the direction of the flow; transverse crevasses, at right angles to the flow.
Diamond Hitch—A technical process of fastening the pack to the pack-saddle, so called from the diamond shape of the rope upon the pack when finished.
Dip—The angles which rock or other strata make with the plane of the horizon. Spoken of in degrees of a vertical circle.
Dirt Bands (Forbes dirt bands)—Dark stripes extending across the surface of a glacier, caused by blown rock-dust collecting in shallow depressions. The depressions are due to open transverse crevasses having joined through pressure from behind. The bands are more or less circular in form, owing to the central ice of the glacier moving more rapidly than the sides.
Divide—The height of land between two drainage basins. The watershed.
Dome—A rounded snow-peak.
Dry Glacier—The lower part of a glacier where it is free from snow.
Fault—A break in a rock-mass by which the strata on one side of the break are depressed so that they are no longer continuous with those on the other side. It may represent displacement of a few inches or of thousands of feet.
Firn—Accumulated snow while in a granular condition and before it has been consolidated into the ice of a glacier; corresponds to the névé or snow-field forming the source of a glacier.
Fohn (German)—A warm wind from a southerly direction.
Forefoot—The part of a dry glacier adjoining the terminal moraine.
Gabel—German for fork; a notch. A deeply cut notch in a ridge.
Gendarme—Name applied to an isolated rock-tower or pinnacle, separated from the mass of which it had originally been a part.
Glacier—The form in which snow accumulating on the higher parts of a mountain range, above snow-line, finds its way down into the valleys. The ice overflows from a firn, or névé or snowfield.
Hanging Glaciers (Glacierettes)—Small glaciers in pockets high on mountain-sides and over-hanging the valley. They frequently nourish trunk-glaciers below. (Vide Mt. Fox, Selkirks.)
Cliff Glaciers (Glacierettes)—Comparatively small glaciers on broad high plateau-like shelves of mountains. They break off in huge pieces falling to the snowfields or trunk-glaciers below. (Vide Mt. Gordon. Rockies.)
Glacier Table—A block of stone, a boulder, supported by a column of ice which its shade has preserved from melting; generally seen on a dry glacier.
Glissade—To slide down a steep snow-slope; performed sitting or standing according to the conditions of the snow. An ice-axe or alpenstock is used for steering.
Grat—An edge or sharp ridge; corresponds to "arête."
Gully—A wide or narrow ravine cleaving the face of a precipice or steep mountain-side—a couloir.
Hand-traverse—Traversing by means of hand-holds only.
Hanging Valley—A tributary valley opening high up on the side of a main valley; often carved out by glacial erosion. It is generally marked by an abrupt step at the mouth, due to the eroding agency having continued its work in the main valley long after it had ceased in the hanging valley.
Height of Land—The watershed between two drainage areas. A crest from which the ground slopes in opposite directions; corresponds to "divide" or "watershed."
Hoodoos—The name given in Western Canada to certain grotesque columns produced by erosion, standing on the slopes of mountains and deep gulches.
Ice-Axe, Ice-Pick—A tough wooden staff, about 3 feet 6 in. long, with an adze-shaped steel head at one and a sharp spike at the other. Opposite the adze, the head is drawn to a point, sometimes set with teeth. It is used to cut steps in steep ice or snow-slopes.
Ice-Fall—That part of a glacier which is much crevassed and broken into séracs through flowing over a precipitous part of its bed.
Knife-edge—A very narrow rock-ridge.
Langthal (German—long valley)—The depression between a moraine and the mountain side, usually filled with snow.
Massif—A central mountain-mass. The dominating part of a range of mountains.
Mittlegrat—A middle edge or ridge, for instance: the rock-edge between two snow-fields or parts of a glacier.
Moraines—The piles of rock, stones and boulder-clay surrounding a glacier and which have been transported by it. Moraines are called Terminal, Lateral, and Medial, according to location: at the end, the sides, or in the middle of a glacier. Lateral moraines are generally and medial moraines are often piled hundreds of feet above the glacier. This is owing to the fact that they consist of a cone of ice which has not melted proportionately with the main body of the glacier, because of the protection afforded by the thick veneer of rock, boulders and clay.
Moulin—A nearly vertical shaft or well cut through a glacier by a stream flowing on the ice.
Névé—The accumulated snow forming the source of a glacier; corresponds to "snow-field" or "firn."
Nunatak—A crest or ridge or rock appearing above the surface of an ice-field or glacier.
Piedmont—A term applied to a compound type of glacier made up of a series of glaciers of the common alpine type, all of co-ordinate importance, which coalesce laterally but retain their individuality from névé to nose. The Asulkan Glacier of the Selkirks and the Wenkchemna and Horseshoe Glaciers of the Main Range are examples.
Pothole—A cavity more or less cylindrical in form, varying from a few inches to many feet in depth and diameter, made by an eddying current of water which causes stones and other material to revolve and thus wear away the surface with which they come in contact.
Red Snow (Protococcus nivalis)—A unicellular plant, an alga, related to the sea-weeds, and belonging to the lowest form of plant life. It grows on the surface of the snow, giving it a crimson stain.
Re-entrant—Rocks are spoken of as being at a re-entrant angle when their faces slope inwards from the perpendicular.
Roche Moutonnées—A group of scattered knobs of rock, rounded and smoothed by glacial action; so called from their resemblance to a flock of sheep lying down.
Rock-Fall, Rock-Slide—An accumulation of broken rock fallen from the cliffs above, through disintegration of their masses; often of considerable extent.
Rucksack—The modern mountaineering knapsack.
Schrund—A crack or crevasse in the ice of a glacier.
Scree—Loose, broken shale at the foot of a cliff; slopes of debris fallen from above through disintegration.
Séracs—Fantastic pillars of ice formed on a glacier by the intersection of longitudinal and transverse crevasses where the grade of its rock bed is broken by ledges or steps.
Snow-line—The lowest line of permanent snow on a high mountain.
Snow-Mushrooms—Accumulation of snow in the woods on trees, stumps, etc., resembling giant fungi of the species named. They are seen of great size and variety along the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Selkirks.
Snout—The most advanced part of a dry glacier; corresponds to forefoot.
Snowshed—A roofed construction of heavy timbers, built over the line of railway to protect it from avalanches falling from the mountain sides. There are five different types of shed constructed along the line of the C.P.R., according to the nature of the avalanches that may fall and the amount of resistance required.
Stoneman, Steinman—A pile of rocks roughly laid together, usually on a mountain-peak or ridge, and intended to serve either as a landmark or as a record of a visit; a cairn.
Striae, Striation—Grooves, or scratches cut in rocks or boulder-clay by the action of ice moving down an incline.
Strike—The direction in which the various strata comprising a rock mass lie. Generally spoken of with reference to the cardinal points of the compass.
Summit—The highest point of a mountain or peak. The highest part of a mountain pass. The highest crest of a ridge.
Talus—The mass of rock fragments lying at the base of a mountain cliff, formed by the accumulation of pieces brought down from above by the action of gravity, frost, rain, etc.; equivalent to "scree" or "debris."
Tarn—A small mountain lake.
Till—A stiff clay containing boulders of all sizes up to several tons weight: often smoothed and striated by glacial action.
Timber-line—The highest place on a mountain where trees are.
Tongue—The extreme end of a glacier; corresponds to "forefoot" or "snout."
Trail—A path cut through forest, or built along a mountain slope to render travel on foot or in saddle possible. Corkscrew Trail—A trail climbing steep mountain-slopes in zigzags, to obtain a suitable grade.
Traverse—The passage along a sloping surface of rock, ice, or snow in a general horizontal direction; also used to define the ascent of one side of a peak and the descent of the side opposite; again, for a ridge that has been travelled from end to end.
Verglas—A thin layer of ice glazing rocks. Under exceptional conditions of weather rain freezes as it falls on the rocks, and is then sometimes said to fall as 'verglas.'
Wall—A term used to denote a steep face leading up to a ridge.
Watershed—The divide between two drainage systems or catchment areas. The height of land between streams flowing in opposite directions.