In 3 ABY, the rebels Luke Skywalker and Han Solo traveled a patrol route on tauntauns that brought them onto the glacier while they set up sensors for the Alliance's headquarters on Hoth, Echo Base. Having placed the final sensors, Solo left the glacier to return to the base, but Skywalker instead traveled south onto the North Ridge to try and investigate what he believed was a meteor. A wampa that dwelt in the cave to the north traveled across the glacier and pursued Skywalker onto the Ridge, attacking him and knocking him unconcious. The wampa then dragged Skywalker and his tauntaun back across the Lanteel Glacier to the creature's cave.
When Skywalker failed to return to Echo Base, Solo set out once again on a tauntaun to search for him, returning from the north to the glacier. Skywalker meanwhile had awoken in the wampa's cave and freed himself, heading back out onto the glacier alone and eventually collapsing into the snow. Skywalker then experienced a Force vision of his deceased mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi, who told him to travel to the Dagobah system. As the vision faded, Solo discovered the now unconscious Skywalker, but with night falling and the temprature rapidly dropping, Solo's tauntaun succumbed to the cold and died. Stuck on the glacier, Solo cut open the tauntaun and used it to keep Skywalker warm while he set up a camp for the night.
The following day, the T-47 airspeeders of Rogue Squadron were dispatched from Echo Base to find the missing duo. Zev Senesca, pilot of the airspeeder Rogue Two, picked up sensor readings from the pair as he flew along the North Ridge to the west of the glacier and followed the readings onto the glacier, where he discovered the pair still alive and rescued them.
The Lanteel Glacier first appeared in the 1980 original trilogy film, Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back. The location was not named in the film, and in the new Star Wars canon was first identified in the 2016 reference book Star Wars: Complete Locations, in a section written by James Luceno and illustrated by Hans Jenssen and Richard Chasemore. The name originated in the Star Wars Legends continuity, where it was first used in the 2005 reference book Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy, which was also written by Luceno with illustrations by Jenssen and Chasemore.
- LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga