*This entry dedicated to the memory of Travis Matthew Lizotte of Aspen, Colorado, 25, who died Sunday while scaling 11,411-foot (3,480-meter) Mount Tronador in Argentina's Nahuel Huapi National Park.

A short one today. I am just thinking about our climb tomorrow (Pinnacle Gully, Huntington's Ravine WI3 III) and am going through that mental checklist of what I will have to bring to go both light and safe. The funny thing about Mount Washington, as the locals know, she is a mountain never to be underestimated...and for those that do underestimate the seriousness of this mountain, there is a list of names at the Pinkham Notch Visitors Center to view and learn from.

Despite the weather forcast for tomorrow (40 degrees and sunny), I still need to think worst case scenario so that should something go wrong, both my partner Dan and I are protected. We plan on doing either Pinnacle or O'dell's Gully respectively and hope to do the round trip in 5-6 hours...it will be a push, but I am sure that we can do it with an Alpine start.

This is the time of year that my mind starts to think about the rock season and so the gullies on Mount Washington mark the end of ice for me as they are typically my last climbs before I hang the tools up and pull out the sticky rubber and trad gear.

I always have mixed feelings about this time of year as it represents another season gone by, another year older and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up; but I still look to these mountains with the same amount of awe and inspiration that I did when I hadn't taken so many trips around the sun!!