Bugs

double ropes or single....please advise

Also, suggestions on boot/crampon system

I suppose this depends on the routes you intend to do, but I liked using my doubles there. If nothing else, they will make it quicker to bail if a storm comes.

I brought a set of glacier boots (Asolo Titan) with BD Neve crampons and was pretty happy with the setup. I generally went without crampons in the afternoon sun because of balling.

Was there last August with a single. I would lean towards a single just for less weight to hump around. But a single strand of double rope could be handy for 4th class stuff, glaciers, or ridge walks, depending on what you plan to do.

I used a pair of hiking shoes with the front half of a pair of sabertooths strapped to the bottom. The shoes were waterproof, but the rocks chewed them up and I had wet feet a lot. It was fine for the col. I saw some people without any crampons just following the footsteps up with an axe. A lot of people had aluminum crampons too. Some had mountaineering boots which are nice and all, but the downside is that they are heavy. If you want to climb the Northeast Ridge for example, you would climbing in boots or carrying them up on your back.

Basically you want the lightest crampon boot combo that will do what you need, which is mostly to keep your feet dry walking on snow and scree and get up one or two steep slopes. Cold wasn't an issue in August really.

We took doubles up last year and I would do the same again. It was useful for speeding up descents on longer days and for easier stuff like West Ridge of Pigeon we just used one of them. As long as you have your systems dialled it shouldn't slow you down too much.

For shoes I used Five Ten Exum Guides which were excellent. Had to put some waterproofing on them, but they were light, crampons stayed on nicely and were good enough for climbing easy/moderate pitches.

Crampons / Axe I went with the Grivel Air Tech Light New Classic / Camp Corsa Nanotech which worked really well and are super light, but we only used them for going up the col.