An icy congregation

If these frozen formations were named by more literal minds, they might have been called 'reverse icicles'. But the Andes, including this mountain pass rising above Chile's Atacama Desert, were mapped by poetically inclined Spanish explorers. They likened formations like these to a kneeling congregation of penitent parishioners: so the packed-snow pinnacles became known as 'penitentes’.
© Art Wolfe/Danita Delimont