Ice Caps

What are they? 

These are basically large sheets of ice covered in snow which feed the glaciers along their perimeter. Covering up to fifty thousand square kilometres, they can be broken up by outcrops of rock which are often the only navigational points around. Ice caps are found in both high and low altitudes although predominantly in northern regions of the world such as Norway, with their perimeters being surrounded by deep, steep sided valleys (often containing fast flowing glacial streams), lakes (fed by meltwater) and low shrub growth such as grasses and dwarf silver birch trees. The valleys themselves are often the only routes into such areas and as such journeys can take a long while with detours and back tracking necessary to find a suitably safe route. Any ice cap bigger than fifty thousand square kilometres is classed as an ice sheet (which shall be discussed in the next post), with the edges of many ice caps providing evidence of previous glaciation such as glacial lakes. An example of an ice cap is that of the Svartisen Ice Cap in northern Norway.