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How did the NY Gully look? quote: I was from a distance with binocs but it didn't look in.

I was heading up Snoqual. mtn. from the north side of the west ridge. I spent the night up there and scouted out the New York Gully route and back side of the mountain. I thought the booming was avy blasting.

Where you of the party of 4 I saw moving up to the Tooth from Source Lake on Thur morning. I was on a solo thing to Snoqualmie and noticed this group. Was wondering what they found. Looking across the valley showed lots of snow on the NE ridge of Tooth.

Snake bites : Yukon Jack, hot water, and lime juice.

I've climbed with my Canon PowerShot 20 (3.3M)for about two years now. It weighs 12 oz. and slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes. For summer rock climbs I keep it in a padded chalk bag and hardly know its there. In winter its kept in a breast pocket, in a ziplocked bag. I don't aspire to publish my photos, just share them with friends. There's a learning curve, as with anything. From my experience, great photos have a lot to do with angle, timing, and lighting, which makes it harder to catch if you're actively climbing or belaying. My better pictures came from 3 person climbs leaving me free to shoot. I put them on a commercial website where I can order prints and friends can visit. Problem now is this site went down several weeks ago without any word from them. I hope they're just upgrading the site, but its a sore point with me right now as I have lots of holiday shots to upload.

Last year I tried hammering my Spectre in with my left hand (hammer hand) and found I was pretty lame. Since then I've switched hammer to right hand and adze to left. Your right about minimal fall protection. The fall testing they did on ice pro a couple years ago bore that out. I think most hooks failed at around 400 lbs load. I've thought that maybe it could serve to enhance an anchor system or your last screw.

That's a lot of hours of warm rain. Will any ice be left up there, is my point.

As of noon Monday (1/7) there's been 38 hours of above freezing temps, with the last 11 hours of 40+ temps and presumably rain at the 5300' elevation of Alpental. Think this will bring it all down on the routes like Chair and Tooth?

Its the piece of gear you need, when you need it. Not your "favorite", left back at the car.

A couple of places : The Mountaineer's bookstore has the following : Classic Dolomite Climbs by Kohler & Memmel The Mont Blanc Massif : The 100 Finest Routes Gaston RebuffatI have Rebuffat's book and just love it. It's a classic, first published in 1973 and republished in '95 by his wife. Lots of great photos. You'll want to go down to Metzger's Maps and get the map : 3630 OT Chamonix - Massif Du Mont Blanc and maybe map 3531ET to the south. Our go http://www.ign.fr Between the map and the book you'll have a winter's worth of exploration and dreaming as you find where all these classics are. The pictures are somewhat amusing, having been taken back in the fifties and sixties. Lots of nickers, wooden axe shafts, and ropes tied around waists on long runout pitches! But that's the way it was. And all the information should be very relavant. At Chessler Books you can get these books as well and, in addition, the Alpine Club's (London) guidebooks for the Alps. I have Valais Alps West,and I got the 1 : 50000 scale maps from the Mountaineer's bookstore. These seem to be very thorough books, but are a pack friendly, smaller format than the coffee table variety that Rebuffat's is. www.chesslerbooks.com or call 800- 654-8502 Hope this helps you out. Now if I can just get myself over there one of these days.....