word of the day: verglas

The word of the day is verglas:

Etymology:  French, < verre verre n. + glas (modern French glace ) ice: see glace n.¹

n. the phenomenon of rain freezing as it falls and forming a glassy coating on the ground, trees, etc.
 (OED)


"In 2008, he climbed the Nordwand in two hours and forty-seven minutes - less time than it takes to watch 'Cloud Atlas'.  The style was pure, too: he waited until a storm had left fresh ice and covered old tracks, and he used no ropes or protection of any kind - just crampons and ice axes, in a technique called dry-tooling.  Later, he repeated the climb for a film crew, doing pitches over and over, waiting for the setup of each shot, and the footage of him dry-tooling verglas, and running up near-vertical snowfields, where one mistake could mean a mile-long plunge, brought him international renown."

 - Nick Paumgarten, "The manic mountain: Ueli Steck and the clash on Everest", 3 June 2013 The New Yorker