Shambles Glacier

Adelaide Island's east coast with Shambles Glacier in the upper right hand corner

Shambles Glacier (67°19’60"S, 68°13’0"W) is a steep glacier 4 miles long and 6 miles wide, with very prominent hummocks and crevasses, flowing east between Mount Bouvier and Mount Mangin into Stonehouse Bay on the east side of Adelaide Island, which lies off the west coast of Graham Land in the British Antarctic Territory.

This is the island's largest glacier, and provides an eastern outlet from the giant Fuchs Ice Piedmont which covers the entire western two-thirds of the island. In doing so, Shambles Glacier provides the largest 'gap' in Adelaide Island's north-south running mountain chain.

The lower reaches of the glacier were first sighted and surveyed in 1909 by the French Antarctic Expedition under Jean-Baptiste Charcot, and resurveyed in 1948 by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey. The upper reaches were mapped from air photos taken by the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition in 1947-48, and by the Falkland Islands and Dependencies Aerial Survey Expedition 1956-57. The glacier was named ‘Shambles’ by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey because of the very broken nature of the glacier's surface.

References

Gazetteer and Map of The British Antarctic Territory: Shambles Glacier