Siachen glacier : World's highest battlefield (6200 m)

Indian Army has a unique experience of more than two decades of living and fighting at high altitude in a glacier environment. Glaciers are snow capped mountains ranging from 3500 to 7500 m with unpredictable and inhospitable weather conditions.

Glacier is derived from the Latin word 'Glacies' meaning ice, a glacier is a natural body of large dimensions consisting of crystal ice formed on the surface of the earth as a precipitation of snow and is constantly moving. Glacier formations require a combination of sub-zero temperatures with very heavy snowfall.

Inland glaciers (ice caps/ice sheets) are the largest glaciers and in many cases are thick enough to bury an entire mountain range except for the most prominent peaks.

Moraines : Glaciers transport, during their movement, enormous quantities of material ranging from fine particles to huge boulders. This finds its way into the mass of the glacier and is called a moraine.

Crevasses : Large cracks (wide openings) which appear on the surface of the glaciers, with varying lengths, depth and width are called crevasses. At times they are bridges with soft snow and therefore dangerously invisible.

Avalanches : Due to continuous precipitation, large quantities of snow and ice accumulate. On mountain slopes at a certain stage this accumulation becomes massive and heavy; the phenomenon of 'snow dynamics' tends to destabilise this mass and even a slight disturbance can bring down this mass in the form of an avalanche. General experience has been that on slopes greater than 30 to 40 degrees, 24 to 48 hours of continuous snowfall of 30 cm or more produces avalanches.