The main goal of this article is to establish a priori and a posteriori error estimates for the numerical approximation of some non linear elliptic problems arising in glaciology. The stationary motion of a glacier is given by a non-Newtonian fluid flow model which becomes, in a first two-dimensional approximation, the so-called infinite parallel sided slab model. The approximation of this model is made by a finite element method with piecewise polynomial functions of degree 1. Numerical results show that the theoretical results we have obtained are almost optimal.