Without any local ice to speak of and with no good skiing to be had anywhere, Matt and I made the long drive to eastern Washington to the shores of Banks Lake.  Banks Lake is south of Grand Coolie Dam and about four hours from Seattle.  We drove out on a Saturday afternoon and spent a rather cold night sleeping on the ground next to the car.  The next morning the ice was waiting.
 

Banks Lake - created by one of the many dams along the once mighty Columbia River.
 

The Devil's Punchbowl.  Note the icicles hanging above.  Every once in a while a big one would come down - CRASH!

Much of the ice we saw from the road wasn't as thick as we'd hoped so we had to settle for a crowded spot called "The Devil's Punchbowl".  Matt led something WI-2ish on the left side of the main flow.  While following I got pelted in the arm pretty good by a chunk of ice from another party.  The section to the right was more WI-3 but you pretty much had to take a number and wait.  We considered setting up a top rope on the rather fragile separate flow on the left, but decided to just get away from the crowds.

Matt crossing a section of frozen lake on the way back to the car.  Always the joker.
 

Driving back down Rt. 155 we spotted some folks top-roping on "The Cable".  It wasn't clear if somebody had led this earlier or walked around to set up an anchor on top.  Either way we were impressed.
 

Thus inspired, we set off to find our own adventures.  A sequence of flows looked promising.  Matt endured brush hell to set up a top rope on the longest one.

Matt rapping down.  Spinning uncontrollably, Matt learned the importance of wearing crampons while rapping down ice - and you should too.

The flow we climbed on was exactly 25 meters tall, straight vertical, and heavily chandeliered.  Definitely a learning experience.  It's nice to beat yourself up once in a while with little real consequence.  The crux was the transition from the pillowy looking ice at the bottom to the icicles above it.  It was slightly overhanging and lacking in good foot placements.  Climbing chandeliered ice is a difficult as everyone says it is.  It's difficult to hammer a pick in because you tend to hit an individual icicle sideways and have your tool deflected.  This leads to a tendency to do more hooking, but the untested ice tends to break off when you put your full weight on it.  Reliance on hooked fragile ice caused me to biff just past the crux.  Unwilling to accept defeat I flailed to the top of it, climbing initially on the two main columns in the center of the above picture (the rope is hung up a bit on the right one).  The closest I came to a "rest" was sticking a leg into to space between the two columns and camming my knee as one does on an off width crack.  This in turn led to some balance problems so I climbed out onto the left pillar.  I got to the top of the pillar only to see that the ice was separated from the rock by about six inches.  Not good, even on top rope.  I could have gotten a couple more feet of climbing by traversing right but decided to call it a climb.