Surf Station: Thanksgiving Edition
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.
Our favorite recent piece though was this one on organizations in the Northeast to support on Giving Tuesday. We came up with the idea for this one on the way up the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail as part of our “research” for this goEast Alpha Guide on Mt. Washington Day Hikes. If you’re looking for a Northeast outdoor organization to support this season, we’ve got you covered.
Now to the links:
A piece we really enjoyed was W. Hodding Carter’s recounting of his efforts to recreate Benedict Arnold’s journey across Maine and into Canada as part of the colonists’ effort in 1775 to capture Quebec City from the British. Carter’s expedition jumps from swamped boats to drunk paddling and back again, all while sharing a Bill-Bryson-like look at the history, logistics, and misery of the colonial effort. If you have any interest in the Revolutionary War, the piece is well worth your time.
We also recently stumbled across another Outside Magazine article, this one on how outdoor companies choose colors. The headline enticed us, as we have long been advocates for brightly colored everything—ropes, packs, outerwear, sunglasses, etc. So much so that over the summer we wrote about our belief that bright is right for goEast. Despite the conservatism found in the article, we still believe that brighter the better.
Speaking of opinions, when we recently observed the death of fleece as a technical outer layer for goEast in this article, little did we know that fleece is having a renaissance in the most unlikely of places—Wall Street and Palo Alto. In July, the Wall Street Journal published a piece titled “How the Fleece Vest Became the New Corporate Uniform” and according to this CNBC article, sales of fleece and down vests at Moosejaw.com are up almost 700 percent over the last three years. For our color curious followers, black is the most popular color, but gray is the choice of those working in finance. Boring!
In the profile department, two pieces in the back issues of Runner’s World caught our attention. One was of Edison Eskeets and his 330-mile run commemorating and retracing the Navajo’s “Long Walk.” The other was of Chris Macko, a trail runner who found social media stardom after taking a mid-career sabbatical from the tech industry to focus on his dream: running. Both are great reads.
Mowing the lawn, raking leaves, shoveling snow are just a few of the chores that go along with home ownership and cut into time spent in the mountains. This tiny house has us thinking about downsizing and driving away from time-consuming yard work.
Mountain biking season at Vermont’s Kingdom Trails might be over, but this video highlighting the area’s newest trail system has Tim already thinking about spring mountain biking. Think there’s any chance one of the featured trails will make the 2019 iteration of Tim’s favorite mountain bike trails?
