This glacier was called “Terraced Glacier” by Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945], leader of the 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition, “owing to a fine glacier at its head which rises in three distinct terraces to the Reef Névé and forms one of its outlets on this side. All three will furnish splendid fields of exploration and many fine climbs of peaks that are as yet untouched, midst whose recesses are hidden wonderful alpine valleys.”

A steppe is an extensive treeless plain; in this case the word seems to mean “stepped.” A névé is the field of frozen snow on the upper part of a glacier.