Acclimatisation - The adaptation of the human body to the rarefied atmosphere at high altitudes.
Arete - A sharp defined ridge of rock or ice.
Avalanche - The sliding away of surface material from a mountain, especially snow.
Anchor - Point where the rope is secured to the snow, ice or rock with fixed bolts, rocks, trees or non-fixed gear to provide protection against a fall.
Belay - The device and technique employed by a climber to safeguard the party from the effects of a fall by one of its members.
Bergschrund - A gap or crevasse that appears near the head of a glacier where the neve field portion of the glacier joins the valley portion of the glacier.
Buttress - A rocky protuberance from a mountain slide or the rock mass between two gullies (But if narrow this may be called a ridge).
Cairn - A pile of stones used for marking the summit of a mountain. Cairns are also used to mark out routes where paths are not obvious.
Chimney - Gap between two rocks which is wider than crack and narrower than a gully; chimney can be used to climb a rock face.
Chockstone - A stone, boulder or pebble, jammed in a crack or chimney. Artificial chocks in metal are now used for protection.
Col - A dip in a ridge usually between two peaks may be deep and wide enough to carry a motor road or it may be a mere dip in an icy skyline. The way across a Col is known as a pass.
Cornice - A consolidated snow bank projecting over the edge of a ridge, plateau or corrie, and formed by prevailing winds. They may be temporary which are likely to Avalanche, or they may be permanent.
Crevasse - A crack in the surface of a glacier. On a dry glacier crevasses can be easily seen and are not usually difficult to avoid. They can be wide and deep but this is not always the case.
Free Climbing - Climbing without using any mountaineering equipment like pitons, nuts, runners, etc is called free climbing. Natural holds are used during free climbing.
Fixed Rope - Ropes fixed by climber during the course of an expedition, enabling them to pass up and down the difficult face of mountain more quickly.
Gendarme - A free standing pinnacle on an Alpine ridge. Gendarmes may be quite small or immense.
Glacier - A huge mass of ice that moves because of its own weight. Glaciers are formed at places where rate of accumulation of snow is more than the rate of melting of snow.
Gully - The rift between two buttresses caused by erosion may be very wide or narrow and may contain a stream. A gully filled with small stones is a scree gully.
Hanging Glacier - A subsidiary glacier set at a higher level than the valley with great ice cliffs or it may join the main glacier by means of a steep ice wall.