These crevasses, or cracks, are on the Athabaskan Glacier in Alberta, Canada. The people provide an indication of scale. As ice flows across the landscape, it may not flow uniformly, and these crevasses develop. The size and pattern to crevasses on glaciers depends partly on the nature of the land the glacier is flowing along. In general, crevasses rarely reach depths greater than 30 meters; at greater depths, the ice flows more readily and the cracks close. The surface of this glacier is covered with debris, silt, sand and other particles, that the glacier transported. As the ice melts, this debris comes up to the surface, giving the surface of the glacier a gray color.

The photo below shows a close-up view of a small crevasse on the Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska. The crevasses on the Mendenhall Glacier are represented as blue lines on the contour map on the right.