mountain glacier

Imaggeo On Monday: Contorted Streams on the Gates Glacier

Allen Pope December 20, 2021

Supraglacial streams in ogives, Gates Glacier

Annual ridges and troughs (called wave ogives) are formed as the ice of the Gates Glacier (in Alaska’s Wrangell Mountains) flows through a steep icefall. Down-glacier, as the ice melts, the rushing meltwater is funnelled into streams, carving ice canyons as it flows, but ultimately directed by these topographic constraints. Description by Allen Pope, after the description on imaggeo.e ...[Read More]

Imaggeo On Monday: Ice caves in high altitude karstic areas

Renato R. Colucci December 13, 2021

Ice caves in high altitude karstic areas. Credit: Renato R. Colucci (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

High altitude karstic environments often preserve permanent ice deposits within caves, representing a lesser-known portion of the cryosphere. Despite being not so widespread and easily reachable as mountain glaciers and ice caps, ice-caves preserve a great deal of information about past environmental changes and paleoclimatic evolution. Since one of their main characteristics is to have ground-ice ...[Read More]

The final days of the mountain glaciers

Hazel Gibson May 11, 2016

Gergeti Glacier 1890-2011 (Credit Levan Tielidze)

In 1896 British lawyer, mountaineer and author Douglas Freshfield climbed an obscure mountain in the Caucasus called Kasbek and in his book detailing his adventures he described the mountain: “From this point the view of Kasbek is superb: its whole north-eastern face is a sheet of snow and ice, broken by the steepness of the slope into magnificent towers, and seamed by enormous blue chasms.” D Fre ...[Read More]