We’ve had a busy week at The Whites Room. Mickey lead off with a dual sport gear list for winter riding in Southern New England.

Before the snow started dumping, Doug and Tim had a great time climbing Flume and Silver Cascades, doing some research for an upcoming goEast piece on moderate ice climbs in Crawford Notch. Their friend Nick joined them that day. Look for him in some of the pics in the article as well as on Tim’s Instagram (@Timjpeck).

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.

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.

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.

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.

While everybody’s been hitting the links recently, we’ve been creating them. Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve been up to the last couple of months. Read on to get over those Monday morning back-to-work blues.