icefall.

1. A steep, broken glacier section where moving ice is split by crevasses into blocks.

2. A waterfall or cascade that has frozen into a descending wall of ice.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• cross an icefall
• crevassed icefall
• traverse a glacier’s icefall
• treacherous icefall
• frozen icefall
• icefall on a cliff
• climb an icefall

On the page

The rope team crossed the icefall before the crevasses widened in the afternoon sun.

The abandoned gorge held an icefall that glittered beneath the moon.

Usage notes

In mountaineering, it names a fractured, steep part of a glacier, not simply any frozen slope. Sense 2: The frozen-cascade sense is descriptive; context distinguishes it from the glacier feature.