Wright Upper Glacier () is an ice apron at the upper west end of

Wright Valley The Wright Valley, named for Sir Charles Wright, is the central one of the three large Dry Valleys in the Transantarctic Mountains, located west of McMurdo Sound at approximately . Wright Valley contains the Onyx River, the longest river in ...

Asgard Range The Asgard Range is a mountain range in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It divides Wright Valley from Taylor Glacier and Taylor Valley, and was named by the Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (1958–59) after Asgard, the home o ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

. It is formed by a

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such as ...

flowing east from the inland ice plateau. Named by the

Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition The Antarctic Research Centre (ARC) is part of the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. Its mission is to research " Antarctic climate history and processes, and their influence on the global clim ...

(VUWAE) (1958–59) for C.S. Wright, a member of the British Antarctic Expedition (1910–13), after whom the "Wright Glacier" (adjusted to

Wright Lower Glacier Wright Lower Glacier () is a stagnant glacier occupying the mouth of Wright Valley and coalescing at its east side with Wilson Piedmont Glacier, in Victoria Land, Antarctica. The glacier was originally called "Wright Glacier" by the British Antar ...

by the VUWAE) was named. Two massive

icefall An icefall is a portion of certain glaciers characterized by relatively rapid flow and chaotic crevassed surface, caused in part by gravity. The term ''icefall'' is formed by analogy with the word ''waterfall'', which is a similar phenomenon of ...

s descend from the plateau into the Wright Upper Glacier, the wide and tall Airdevronsix Icefalls and the equally tall wide Warren Icefalls, which was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) in 2004 for Alden Warren, a longtime photographer (scientific and technical) with the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

, involved in documenting maps of Antarctica. Vortex Col is a col leading from the plateau into the south side of the glacier. At this locality, winds carrying clouds of snow from the polar plateau are deflected by Mount Fleming and funneled down this depression. The descriptive name was given by

New Zealand Antarctic Place-Names Committee New Zealand Antarctic Place-Names Committee (NZ-APC) is an adjudicating committee established to authorize the naming of features in the Ross Dependency on the Antarctic continent. It is composed of the members of the New Zealand Geographic Board p ...

(NZ-APC).

References

Glaciers of the Asgard Range McMurdo Dry Valleys {{McMurdoDryValleys-glacier-stub