Wastral

So, with this data, you had better be climbing before the end of July at worst. August will be too late with WIDE open crevasses unless you get lucky. Enjoy. Its an awesome place.

Says the guy with 17,600 posts on cc.com..... Personal experience I take it?

buy the snowshoes without the heel lever, save yourself $100 easy, make your your own heel levers. Buy used, no one uses their snowshoes. Or nearly no one.

I take a cordelette for rescue situations only. Sliding X with a single backup is always far faster to build/take down and unlike a F'Ollette actually equalizes at least 2 pieces in ALL situations. The problem as I see it, is that in a fall the load is near instantaneous requiring the cordelette to stretch near instantaneous as well to equalize said load onto the different pieces whom also have to Set themselves into the rock firmly. This simply cannot happen in such a small time frame before putting the full or near full load on a single piece. Now when you build your 3 point cordelette and are already hanging on it say on a BIG wall, then you have pre-stretched said cordelette and any new load can be applied to all of said pieces whereas with the typical fashion where one is sitting on a belay ledge, said cordelette is always only tied firmly to 1 piece and has to stretch say a half inch to load the 2nd or 3rd piece due to the nature of how it is tied. It is impossible to tie all 3 legs evenly. It gets even hairier when its in a pendulum traverse(VERY COMMON in alpine) to the side and if you do a F'ollette you are truly screwed as your fixed 3 piece Tie in point will have one leg far shorter than the other 2 in regards to where the load(Fall) will come from... the side. In this situation you MUST use a sliding X otherwise your "belay" is all of 1 piece strong for the FULL FALL load. Not Good. Not Good at all. Newbs, DO NOT use Cordelettes to begin with. Please. Thankfully most newbies usually don't climb vastly outside of their comfort zone. I know, we all claim to be fearless heroes, thankfully most actually do have fear and are heroes smart enough to retreat.

It should be noted that most all steep snow routes generally follow shallow gullies allowing the placement of rock pro. The reason one wishes to do so should be obvious to even the novice... Climbing steep snow is not hard. Descending steep snow/ice is harder. Learn abalakov anchors. Learn correct self arrest with axe/pons technique. The rule of thumb about not using Pons is for the novice only and applied to generally places where from experience one know they can stop by using axe only. On the other hand with Experience, note the big ol' "E" word there again, with experience, one quickly will understand that to stop a slip/fall one has to do so in the first 5 feet on steep terrain and most certainly WILL include the use of crampon points. Practice, practice falling/slipping at first without a pack or crampons, then with pack and no pons on and finally, with crampons on. If you have access to an old junk rope, tie a junk old, Kelty aluminum frame pack to the end and fill it with 150lbs of rocks. At a very shallow angled slope, push down hill and practice stopping it, go to steeper slopes ONLY as you get comfortable doing so. SO many people NEVER practice this. It is COMPLETELY different than stopping your own fall. In this instance you most certainly DO use your feet/crampons along with your upper torso ice axe combo as power to stop said fall is produced by churning your legs as if you were running up hill. In short, on snow, you are soloing. Mentality must be of a kind. The rope is there for as others have said Crevasse problems, rock fall knocked unconscious problems, and pendulum issues, and as I brought up first and formost, nearly all steep snow/ice routes will be next to or on rock allowing the placement of more reliable pro. Enjoy PRACTICE falling!

I second that motion. The only joy will be attaining the summit. Cascadian etc on South side are just fine if you go at the right time of the year. Late may/June is fine. Last year, bro bailed on the North ridge due to snow/ice as they didn't bring ice gear, but the south side was in perfect shape. Beware avalanches. Make sure a Hot few days have already happened and said avalanches are done for. Generally this happens in April in Stuart range, but can happen later. Remember, Stuart region gets far less snow than Snoqualamie pass and is a month ahead at a minimum on the spring melt cycle. Baring an odd spring anyways.

If the Suiattle road Ever reopens(Jack ass evnironwackos and their lawsuits without any basis, and moron judges allowing said frivolous lawsuits in the first place), the Image Lake--> Canyon Lake--> Stonehedge ridge traverse --> Down Sulpher mountain trail, or reverse order is likewise spectacular, though this is quite a bit of off trail and not well maintained trail. If it doesn't open, take bikes. Its an easy hour bike ride even with packs. The loop you did is still my favorite, anywhere in the state, though take an extra day to divert to Glacier Peak Meadows on the other side of Red Pass. Make sure to check out Pilot Peak and the Jet BLACK volcano plug just to the west of the PCT.

Rechargeable lithium. Buy, modify existing case, done. Lose 25% of power compared to non rechargeable lithium, save a HECK of a lot of money. Use your spare camera lithium battery if nothing else. 2 birds 1 stone and you now have a double backup either for your headlamp or your camera. All you have to do is make the connection modification. If you want to go really light and really powerful, get the lithium batteries sold to RC airplane modelers. If you want to keep your lithium batteries around for nearly forever, never charge them over 70-85% and when the battery is getting low do not keep using it till its dead dead. Doing both of these will keep your rechargeable LI-ion or Li-poly around for a VERY long time. If you are pissing about a couple of ounces, take a leak, dump, work out more, or quit eating so much.

Bowline on a coil. If you do 8 on a bite it gets loose and makes a Heck of a mess generally. Bowline keeps the loops tightly tied in my experience whereas after a bit one is always fiddling with the bite when it loosens up and pretty soon you have loops dragging on your gear and soon your thighs/knees. Enjoy

Lost Grey Tarptent squal 2 Teanaway trailhead Lake Ingals. Fell off of my brothers pack. If you found it and picked it up. Call me at 425-392-0975 Will come and pick it up and bring you a blackberry pie and vanilla ice cream to "sweeten" the deal. =_)

Sorry, can't have mine. =-) Don Serl is sometimes online and you can send him a Personal Message. Put the request in the Canada section he seems to check that fairly often. Tellot Spire can't be beat. Quite a bit of ice though. 5.9 Claw peak right next to Plummer Hut also is great. 5.8 Several I have not done. There are numerous such routes. Several on the upper Tellot Glacier around 11,000 feet. Forget their exact names. Never had time for them. If I was in kick ass shape, I am not, rather piss poor sick shape, I would be very tempted to try for Serra 5 west face. Its 5.11 and??? 1100 feet of pure vertical granitic rock? I believe.

For 2-5 days I have seen guys get away with as little as 35L packs. If 2 even less. I prefer a 50L pack myself. Not as nice for climbing. Then again I have a tiny "pack" for summits I take with me weighing all of 1/2lb big enough for down jacket, snap on pants, camera, water, snacks, rain jacket, 1st aid. A 50L pack is More than enough for week ++++ trips with climbing gear, camera, tripod, etc.

-2 on small hexes. The larger ones can actually be used. The smaller hexes are a complete waste IMO. I dutifully carried them for a season but found that small hexes I never used as they are a pain in the ass to place and one usually has nuts that fit instead and take a bite easily and postively. The larger fist sized hex, I still tote around along with the 1 1/2 inch guy. These actually have enough camming action to fit a wide variety of cracks and can take the place of a very valuable #2 cam at a fraction of the cost. No you are not going to be placing hex's on 5.10 stuff, but there is a LOT of ground that is 5.0 or 4th class where hex placement is easily done. PS. I notice you have a #4 4" cam in there. Personally I find I never need such a cam. EVER. If I do, it needs to be MUCH larger (off width stuff) and I can always find placement for nuts, tri-cams, slings, or #2 sized cams. Personally, I would sell the one I have if I thought there was a sucker out there willing to buy it. Biggest waste of money I have ever spent. Hmm then again, that movie I paid $10 bucks for the other day has got to be tops.....

Well, A guy I know Carl Stanky, used to practice tying the knots in the shower with the water on cold. Not sure how much it helped him though. Then again he also slapped a piece of plywood across his lap, grabbed the SkillSaw and nearly killed himself as said powered saw cut both of his legs 1 inch deep... Genius in many flavors!

So, disagreeing is trolling. I suppose disagreement in your world is also hate crime?