Climbing is much like shooting. The more you practice, the more you push your limits, the better you'll be at it. So after work & on some days off during the summer, some friends and I would go to the Athabasca Glacier and rappel down into mill wells. Great areas to do vertical and over hanging ice !
How they form is water will find a crack and pour into it and enlarge it.
Peter Jowett in photo. Whom, by the way, is the author of the book: Nahanni the River Guide.
Hope he or some Warden reads this & contacts me: I have a picture or two I'd like to have pinned up in their office