UKH

"Rimaye à étage" is the French word for a rimaye (bergschrund) with not one but several crevasses that may or may not have multiple bridges (I hope you get the idea).  Whats the best way to express this in English?  Many people will be familiar with "étage" in the sense of floors in a house but in French it can also mean layers (for instance of a cake), tiers, storeys etc I think (I am a native English speaker).  

On line-translations give this as "floored rimaye". which doesn't really help.

Staggered rimaye?

A pain in the arse?

Accordion bergschrund.

I like this one!

In reply to cdpej:

Never heard that term: presumably successive rimayes. The best example was/is of course the famous triple rimaye to get into the Ryan, Croc, and Pain de Sucre all of which i've done. 

my french is only basic, but if i read that in a guide i would interpret it as 'multi-stage rimaye'.

as an aside, rimaye and bergschrund are not actually the same thing in a glaciology sense (though they are often used interchangeably). one is the gap between the rock and the ice, and the other is the gap between the ice stuck to the mountain and the moving ice. im not 100% certain which is which, but i am fairly sure the rimaye is the former and the schrund the latter.

i stand corrected, the 'randkluft' is the gap between the rock and the ice. the french us 'rimaye' to cover both terms.

No, there is a special rather recondite term in French making that distinction, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it is.

I think this would be described as a complex , double , multiple  bergschrund or rimaye by an English speaking alpinist.

Recondite is a lovely word!  The word you are looking for is "la roture". It's sometimes used for the "crevasse" between a snow slope (that isnt a glacier) and the mountain itself.  For instance at the start of many of the routes above the Envers hut.  Lots of native French speakers dont seem to know what it means and in practice "rimaye" covers both things.  I can't help with German but it sounds like they have 2 separate words as well.  

Forum posting on camp to camp says "mot savoyard dérivé du latin ruptura". 

A maze of crevasses