Really? Well I removed that photo and a few other questionable shots from North America. But I am still left with this one, that looks like penitentes to me. By defininition, a penitente has to be from South America?
I thought a penitente, per definition, could only exist in South America. It seems like I was wrong. If I got the glaciology book I have here right, the word penitentes has been adopted as there was no good popular term for the phenomena. In scientific terms it's called selective snow ablation formations, according to the book. I can further read penitentes are very common in Los Andes and other South American sub ranges and can under certain conditions appear also in North America. A larger penitente like phenomena can also be found in the dry highlands of Asia. The latter seems to have some different characteristics (I don't understand the scientific words in the book), so those are not "real" penitentes.
I can also read the correct word for penitentes is nieve penitentes.