Observations of pancake (peak flux near 90 ¿ pitch angle) distributions of low-energy (≲100 eV) ions are reported. Pancake distributions occur often in H+ and He+ simultaneously while O+ fluxes are either undetectable or field-aligned. The H+ and He+ pancake distributions typically display characteristic energies of the order of 10 eV and are frequently mixed with higher density, colder (&kgr;T≲3 eV), isotropic, quasi-Maxwellian components. They appear often within the outer regions of the plasmasphere, and seem to occur most frequently on the dayside and near the magnetic equator.