Nick

I would agree that warm "leather" boots are a good choice for day climbs, even in the Northeast; plastics are the ticket for overnight trips in winter.

You can not "just walk around the Glaciers". Several high passes on the route can only be reached by fairly long glacier crossings with plenty of crevasses. Rescue skills are a good idea, but don't neglect learning and practicing the basics, such as walking and climbing with crampons and an ice axe. You should be comfortable walking in crampons, climbing in ballance, executing self arrest and self belay with an ice ax and basic rope management in order to reduce the likelyhood of the need for self rescue, as well as to give yourselves the confidence to enjoy glacier travel. You need to be good with map and compass as well; long stretches of the route have no visible trail and getting lost can be very time consuming. You will also want to be comfortable scrambling up and down steep slopes strewn with loose rock, scree, rotten snow and so forth. Try and keep your packs as light as possible. The easiest way to do this is to bring less stuff. Bring only things you really need. When you buy gear try to choose particularly light things. The Ptarmigan is a lot of fun if you are comfortable with steep scrambling and cramponing on ice or snow as well as strenuous hiking, but I have met less experienced hikers that came from far away to do the Ptarmigan and were scared off by steep snow right at the start. This is dramatic and challenging terrain that does not seem hard to experienced climbers, but might turn out to be terrifying to the inexperienced. There is lots of great hiking in every direction in the immediate vicinity of the Ptarmigan; so you won't have wasted the trip out here even if the Ptarmigan turns out to be intimidating when you get a look at it. Bring some extra maps for an alternate hike. Bad weather might also make you decide to hike on nearby trails instead of the Ptarmigan. If you do the Ptarmigan in August most of the snow will be off the glaciers, so crevasses will be easy to see. On the other hand there will be steep stretches of glacier that may be too icy for self arrest with an ice ax to stop you from falling out of control should you trip and fall. If you are tied together with a rope you may well all fall, unless you have a few ice screws and know how to place them to provide a running belay. Some experienced climbers will not hesitate to solo these relatively low angle glaciers (climb unroped) when the ice is free of snow and the crevasses are all visible, but there are places where a slip or stumble could easily kill you without a rope and some sort of anchors in place. In early season (through July perhaps) there will be a lot of snow, both on the glaciers, hiding crevasses, and on steep slopes throughout the route. Again, if you are comfortable with snow it can even make travel easier, but if you are not comfortable on steep snow it can be scary. If you spend some time searching people's personal climbing web sites you will probably find good photos parts of the route. These may help you get some idea what the terrain is like. I would not recomend setting off on the Ptarmigan without first getting some training on less committing glacier routes.

Perhaps wool worn next to the skin might mitigate the burns from a synthetic wind shirt should it catch fire. I have seen old timers who get away with wearing cotton Carharts outdoors in the wet Northwest by coating them with Scotchguard. I wouldn't want to do any strenuous climbing in Carharts though . . .

There are lighter boots, but newmatics work well with my Tecnica Bio Ascend boots (2 pounds per boot). My favorite set up is a really light garmont boot with strap-on light steel Charlet Moser crampons. For a really light set up you may want to abandon the newmatic crampons.

I just bought a MontBell synthetic belay jacket with a hood and waterproof breathable outer shell. I am very happy with it. The thing weighs 1.5 pounds and is super warm and well designed. Pro Mountain Sports stocks them in Seattle.

Where will you climb? Will you climb in winter? I have climbed a lot in New Hampshire in winter and in the Cascades in Washington. If you plan to climb in winter in the Northeast you should get plastic boots. In the (warmer) Cascade range you can get away with lighter boots in winter, but I still prefer plastic boots in winter even here. Scarpa Alpha ice (or whatever the latest equivelant is) are a good choice. The lightest and most comfortable plastic boots that fit your feet are the way to keep your feet warm at 30 below zero. If you want boots for the rest of the year I'd recomend something lighter and more comfortable to hike in than the La Sportiva Nepals. Fit and comfort are the main thing. I like boots made by Garmont and Technica. LaSportiva makes a general purpose mountaineering boot called "Glacier" that is comfortable. The ultra light LaSportiva "Trango" boots are less comfortable in my experience, and they have a reputation for being wet. I think you are much better off with the right boots for winter and the right boots for warmer seasons. If you get big clunky leather boots to try and use one set of boots year round (in the cold Northeast) you will have sore feet in summer and frozen feet in winter.

Snide man with down good. Stupid man with synthetic bad. Ugh.

I am 155 - 160 pounds, 5'-10", and I use the new fat Shuksans in a 174 cm length, which seems just right. The longer length is probably OK too, especially on long trips with a bigger pack. I used to ski 180's when I had less fat skiis. Make sure you like your boots a lot before you mount the Dynafits. Try the boots on a rental ski if you have to. Once the bindings are mounted you may find that you will not be able to remount them to fit a slightly differrent boot, because the new holes would be too close to the old holes! Unless you have the "comfort" Dynafit bindings, which adjust to fit several boot sizes, this can be a real problem. If you love dynafit bindings, as I do, start by finding the right boots, then mount your bindings to the ski. Take your time finding the right size boot if you care about downhill performance. Don't get shells that are too small. Fiddle with the buckle adjustments until they are just right, but not over tight. Most boots can be adjusted to be comfortable on the uphills, but there is a wide range in performance on the downhill, based on fit and boot design. The moral is, go to a good shop, spend a lot of time getting the right size boot, take it home and wear it around the house (you can do this before cooking the thermofit liners). If you still like your boots you can try them out with rental back country skiis. You might want to thermofit them now. You'll learn more if you ski inbounds, riding lifts all day. Try skinning up the hill a few times too, but concentrate on skiing lots of downhill runs until your feet swell up and the liners pack out a bit. At this point you've bought the boots, but if you don't like them you have at least avoided drilling holes in the wrong place on your skiis. If the boots still feel good it's time to get your dynafits mounted to match the boots.

Sometimes I use a canon point-and-shoot that was designed for use both underwater and on the surface. I like it because it has big controls, designed for clumsy neoprene gloves, that are easy to work with jumbo gloves on in the mountains. The wide angle lense and point and shoot design mean that I can shoot lots of pictures in the midst of climbing without diverting too much time and attention to photography. I can shoot one handed while belaying, or in mid-lead; I may not even bother to look through the view finder at times. I love my fancy SLR cameras, but they take too much time, care, and attention to use in the midst of the action. The camera is totally waterproof, sturdy and light, so I can drag it through snow or leave it dangling in the rain. You miss some shots with such a simple camera, but you get a lot of others that you might miss if you had to fool around with something fancier and more delicate. I like Velvia slide film. This is a great camera for steep snow or Glacier travel, where you want one hand for the ice ax, but still want to shoot film with your other hand. I carry the camera on a sling, around the neck but with my right arm through the sling. The camera is worn inside my wind shell, which keeps it from getting caught in climbing slings worn outside. I can slide the camera outside the shell and hold it up to my eye with one hand in a moment, and just drop it if I need both hands.

Dr Crash, I think you may have misunderstood the test data. The HB Carbon Dyneema helmet actually has one of the two best rating for top impacts. The force (in Kn) shown in the test results, is the force delivered to the neck of the test dummy. This means that a small number is good. I was happy to see that my old standby, the Edelrid Ultralight, has low force numbers in all types of impact. When you take away all of the HB helmets (no longer availlable) the Edelrid might be the best over all. The Ecrin Rock is a bit better in top impacts, but a lot worse for front hits. The bucket's got to fit your noodle though.

Synthetic bags only weigh a bit more and you can carry fewer clothes since you can dry damp clothes inside your synthetic bag at night. The whole system may end up lighter. You have to compare weights of whole systems.

Training is aid.

Scarpa Alpha Ice boots. Climb very well for plastic, warm, light, and you can hike in them.

I like light wings.

Dynafit bindings, Garmont Megaride boots, K2 Shuksan skiis. Great combination.

Pro Ski Service, Seattle or North Bend.

Subzero is the baddest I've seen. I liked the large Coleman lanterns everyone was using on K2. No one used headlamps, just these great big camping lanterns that you hold in one hand (leaving the other hand free for the ice axe). I did notice that Coleman was listed as a sponsor in the credits . . . this movie has too much badness in it to enumerate. Watch it!

I've rapped the south face with a single rope. There was one rap station (that you only need when rapping on a single rope) way over on the climbers right side of the route, about half way down, that was kind of spooky. It was a wad of slings that were somehow wedged behind a loose rock. When I asked my partner how to go about rapping off this shoddy looking anchor his advice was "don't look at it". Perhaps this is the hazardous anchor that may have been removed (see the ambiguous post by Allasdair above). Has this bad anchor been replaced so that the route can still be rapped with a single 50M rope?

I just bought a pair of Garmont "Strata" boots at Feathered Friends. These are a cross between approach shoes, hiking boots and alpine climbing boots. I tried them out by climbing Mt. Formidable, so lots of talus and cramponing on icy glaciers as well as steep class three scrambling on rock. These boots are really great. Dry (so far), climb great, lightweight, worked well with crampons, super comfy . . . They fit well with the new Petzl-Charlet light 10 point steel crampons (Sarken, I think). They have a sneaker-like shock absorbing quality but also have a medium stiff vibram sole and hard (sticky rubber) toe and heel caps that make them great with crampons and step kicking. Mine only weigh 3 pounds a pair, which is as light as the La Sportiva wonderboots, but the Garmonts are much more comfortable as well as more compact and more nimble on rock. These boots will only work with strap on crampons. They are a lot lighter than many would use for general alpine travel, but I love them.

Granite Gear used to make a summit pack a lot like the Genie, except that it had side compression straps which made it carry better than my Genie does.

If you're carrying beer you might as well bring along a cold chisel and a hammer.

I survived several nights of rain, snow and ice, sleeping on rock ledges in a tiny 8 ounce Mont Bell gore tex bivy bag. The thing was amazing, though it finally got me wet when I was buried in snow on the last night. I was really impressed with how well the little bag worked, but the whole time I yearned for my sturdy and roomy 24 ounce Integral designs bag!

Down bags don't really save weight 'cause you need to carry extra clothes. With a synthetic bag you can dry your clothes in the bag. Everybody likes down until, eventually, something goes wrong with the system for staying dry, then it gets ugly!

I have observed that the rock in dirty gullies, where a lot of rock is embedded in steep dirt, is much more prone to fall after a rain. The dirt sets up like mortar when dry, but turns back into squishy mud when wet. A lot of climbs in the cascades involve passage through these dirty gullies. Whole mountains in the Olympics seem to be made of rubble glued together with dirt. I think that there are plenty of places where rock fall is worse after rain. Melting snow can have exactly the same effect as rain.

Yeah, sure, the Havocs were fine with Dynafit bindings in the back country, it was only doing lift served skiing that I didn't like the combination. My skiing style probably has more to do with my preference than does the gear. The Shuksans are more versatile though.