Luke Foley
Doug Martland
Genevieve Martland
Tim Peck
Mickey Spades
Thanks for the cute picture of Tim and Nellie that you texted on Xmas Eve. It’s a fantastic shot of a man and his new best friend. But looking at the picture got me wondering—since when has Tim liked dogs? The last thing I remember is him threatening that poor lady at Lincoln Woods when her dog so much as barked at us. Now that he has two of his own, I often find myself, to paraphrase his favorite Twitter follow, wondering “whaz up with Tim?”
In sum, if you’re looking for a bag that can hold some extra gear on your smaller Enduro style bikes, this is the one for you. I’ll update this review in the early spring when the weather warms and I’ve put some more miles on it. But until then it’s safe to say you can’t go wrong with the Reckless 10.
Everybody on the TWR wrote about their favorite piece of gear for 2018. Here’s our choices.
The best part of pack-less riding is that you can do it using any bike jersey with rear pockets. So stash your snacks in one, the tool bag in another, and the extra layer and phone (with its built in camera) in the third. With the tube and C02 strapped to the frame and fluid in the bottle holders you’ll be good to go. See you on the trails!
As our fun, young generation explores this crazy world today, we all share that one desire—meeting our outdoor partner in crime. You know that guy or girl who will rip down Sidewinder at Kingdom Trails and join you for that dawn patrol at your favorite ski hill on the next pow day. But we all come to the same crossroad: how do you meet these awesome people?
Skiing is awesome. So is ice climbing. And between us, we’ve had some pretty good days out in the past couple of weeks. Most notable was a fantastic early-December day skiing on Mount Washington. The conditions were so good that even Mickey Spades brushed off the summer wax off his skis and joined us.
I wrote the other day about what we climbed during a recent trip to Red Rock. With the climbing summarized, here are a few more post-trip reflections.
I recently returned from a fantastic 5-day climbing trip to Red Rock with my friend Josh, who I met during the AMGA Rock Guide Course in North Conway in September. Here’s a quick rundown of what we climbed.
If somebody told me that they were going to fly a blimp filled with hydrogen gas to the North Pole and back, I’d question their sanity. But in the mid-1920s, before the Hindenberg explosion in 1937, dirigibles were all the rage. And although Italian airships captained by General Umberto Nobile made it to the top of the world twice, becoming the first and second airships to do so, the latter trip ended in a disaster that triggered one of the most extensive searches in polar history. In Disaster at the Pole, Wilbur Cross has the story of the flight of the airship Italia, the Italia‘s May 25, 1928, crash, and the crew’s epic struggle for survival in a small, red, tent on the Arctic sea ice as multiple international teams tried to rescue them.
Now that we’re both back from climbing trips—Tim from a bouldering trip in Alabama and Doug from a Thanksgiving trip to Red Rock—there’s no denying that the holidays are here. Christmas lights are everywhere, the radios waves are blasting Christmas songs, and our inboxes are filled with holiday deals. Our writing reflects it too. We’ve written a series of holiday-themed gift guides for goEast, the first of which—a winter-themed Mt. Washington Hiking Gift Guide—published Thanksgiving week. A second, this time Mt. Monadnock-themed, came out this week. We also did a very wintery piece on How to Choose Crampons.
With the 2018 mountain biking season coming to close, at least for me, it’s the perfect time to reflect on what was a fantastic year of riding. This year one of my main mountain biking goals was to explore more—which meant everything from visiting new trail systems to simply investigating new parts of well-traveled trail networks. With that in mind, here are my 5 favorite trails—in reverse order—that I rode for the first time this year.
At Little Elephant Head in Tompson Street Reservation on Cape Ann, the 5 feels like a 7, the 6 starts like an 8, and the best 7 climbs like a 5. And as Nick and I discovered last weekend when we set off to climb at this obscure Red-Rock-alternative, the routes themselves are really hard to find.
Is winter here already? It sure seems like it. The Black Dike has been climbed. The Sherby and the Cog have been skied. Wildcat and Killington are both open. And while some of our favorite places aren’t quite “in” yet, here’s a few of the things we’re thinking about as we transition from bikes and climbing shoes to skis and crampons.
Here one day, gone the next. Between the recent cold snap and the early-season snow, fall in the Northeast seems to have come and gone quickly this year. But despite feeling the squeeze on one of our favorite times of the year—seriously, who doesn’t love Rocktober?—we still managed to post several fall related pieces.
If you’re looking for a moderate fall hike with amazing foliage and fantastic views of the Lakes Region, you can’t do much better than Mt. Roberts at the Castle in the Clouds Conversation Area near Moultonborough, New Hampshire. Just a 5.2-mile round trip, the hike is family-friendly with moderate elevation gain and comfortable footing. We hiked this 2,582 foot peak a couple of weekends ago and loved it. It’s a great option for anybody looking for an easy and enjoyable hike. Check it out.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my favorite pitches that I’ve lead in 2018 (so far). There were a bunch of candidates and it was a fun process to whittle down the list. Here’s my top 5, with a few honorable mentions for good measure.
Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing & Living in Yosemite is more of a collection of short stories than it is a single narrative, which makes it an easy to pick up and put down. It also makes it a quick read. So if you’re looking to learn more about the roots of Yosemite climbing give Glen Denny’s Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing & Living in Yosemite a read.
Hiking with a four-year-old and a seven-year-old can be exhilarating, educational, and, at times, exhausting—and that’s before you even leave trailhead. Trekking up the Sugarloaf trail in Carroll, NH is a great family hike and a nice way to test out just how ready the troops are for one of the 4,000-footers down the street.
For the past five years, I have ridden my bicycle in the Beth Isreal Deaconess A Reason to Ride—a charity bike ride that raises money for cancer research—in support of my best friend’s wife who is living with, and fighting, brain cancer. In the wake of such an inspiring event, you might think I would feel moved to write about how the minor suffering we endure on the bike is nothing compared to what the people we ride for go through every day in their battle against cancer—in fact, I have here—or how uplifting it is to see people from all different backgrounds and fitness levels come together to support their loved ones. Sadly, the truth is that the ride brings all of my worst instincts to the surface.
Last summer, while working with Tim on several goEast pieces about hiking Vermont’s 4,000-footers, I ended up hiking four of the five peaks (Mansfield, Camel’s Hump, Ellen, and Abraham) in a 24-hour period. Having done four so casually, it was only natural to wonder if we could do those four and Killington (Vermont’s fifth 4,000-footer) in the same amount of time. Well, a couple months ago, we did. Vermont Sports Magazine has the story of our very-humid adventure in its September issue. Look for a print copy at locations around Vermont, or check out the digital version here.
