nunatak

Noun

nunatak (plural nunataks or nunataker)

1. A mountain top or rocky element of a ridge that is surrounded by glacial ice but is not covered by ice; a peak protruding from the surface ice sheet.
   • We made for a slope close to the end of the island or nunatak, where Shackleton must have got up also; it is obviously the only place when you look at it from a commanding rise.1922, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913, volume 2, Constable and Company Ltd., page 365
   • Only a few lichens and mosses colonize the rocky walls of cirques and nunataks.2008, Andrea M. J. Coronato, Fernando Coronato, Elizabeth Mazzoni, Miriam Vásquez, “The Physical Geography of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego”, in J. Rabassa, editor, The Late Cenozoic of Patagonia...