In an effort to find winter, I made a drive to the great state of New Hampshire this past week.

I met Brad at his place in Brooklyn and after loading a half-dozen duffel bags of gear, we pointed it north for the (hopefully) frozen White Mountains.

We had a great stay at the Harvard Cabin (thanks Rich) and climbed on perfect alpine ice in Huntington Ravine for a couple of days. What (you may be asking) does this have to do with photography?

Well, a scant 2 days before we left, I received a Canon T3i in the mail, making our climbing trip its innaugural adventure!

Brad on approach to the first roped pitch of Damnation Gully

My main workhorse cameras since they were released have been the Canon 1D Mark III and 1Ds Mark III, and while they are great on location, with a variety of pro features and bomber reliability... they're really heavy.  Their weight and size are the reason that neither of them went to the mountains of Ecuador with me earlier this month.  So, enter the small, light, discreet and (relatively) inexpensive Canon Rebel T3i, my new travel-personal adventure-take it everywhere camera.

For this trip I slapped on the Canon 35mm f/1.4L (giving me a 56mm equivalent focal length) and called it good.  I would be shooting in daylight on snow, so this definitely wasn't a low-light test. I wanted to see how this consumer grade camera handled the cold/snow/abuse of the mountains compared to my 1-series behemoths (the 1D Mk3 went to Denali with me in 2008).

 Brad starting to form a nice layer of rime ice that would eventually coat everything that day

Brad coming up to the final belay on Pinnacle Gully, halfway through a day of blowing ice pellets 

In short, it was awesome! Temperatures in the single digits, snow, blowing ice pellets, 80mph wind, 5lb chunks of ice hitting the camera in its chest mounted Kata DH 425 holster (discontinued); it handled some of the worst weather Mount Washington had to offer.  Battery life was great, autofocus was lighting fast and super accurate (too much so, more on that in a bit), controls were surprisingly easy to use while wearing big winter gloves... just great.

Earning every inch. Brad crawls from the top of Pinnacle Gully to the Alpine Garden against 85mph winds

I couldn't be happier with how the T3i is going to fill a niche in my quiver of cameras. The only problem I had with it on this first outing was in being surprised by how incredibly good the autofocus was.  I was expecting performance/precision along the lines of a 20D/5D mk 1, based purely on the price.  It caught me off gaurd when the T3i latched onto the most ephemeral points of contrast, like the blowing snow in this last image.

The sky cleared, but the wind kept on blown' during our descent from Pinnacle Gully