Mount Mills below is to the NW below the horizon in the center right
Last year I completely skipped the year end report, and this year I was a bit late, but at least got something written. If you are not on the mailing list for the report, e-mail me and I can put you on the list.
The 2019+ report ended with Iris and I living in Bishop under pretty strict lockdown and doing a fair bit of training and yoga. Happily the lockdown eased and sadly so did the yoga and training. About once a month we traveled back to Orange County to visit Plato (the cat) plus any other things that needed to be done there.
In the spring we ventured back out to the desert with a tick ridden climb of Kingston Peak plus Avowatz and another trip with Maturango and others. In general every few weeks we did another trip to some bigger peaks - A cold Tinnemaha (crampons and ice axe trip), Domelands (some climbing, some scrambling), Sawtooth and Spanish Needle, a wintry backpack in to Gabb, Hilgard, and Abbot. Then I got an infection which took me out for a few weeks end of June through mid July. We did manage a few more day hikes and one big overnight to the Ionian Basin. Then it was time for the Sierra Challenge where I was not feeling 100% but I managed to do all the days but not a lot of bonus peaks. There were a few more dayhikes in the mountains and SUP (stand up paddleboading) trips in lakes and on rivers.
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In September we went on a group backpack trip into N Yosemite and the wildfires started. There were apocalyptic skies and ash fall but the air was mostly clear in the mornings when we hiked the most. Later in the month there was an attempt to dodge the smoke with peaks in the S Sierra.
October brought a trip to Death Valley to climb Telescope and other peaks, more rock climbing, an SUP trip in the ocean with dolphins, and more bicycling. Then in Nov and Dec we started trips to the desert - climbing and peaks in Red Rocks, and elsewhere. New years found us on another trip to the desert N and E of Joshua Tree and into SW Arizona and extreme SE Ca.
2021 January brought more peaks in the desert but things took a bad turn on the way down from a local bike to hike trip when Iris crashed her mountain bike on the way down Silver Canyon road and hurt her knee. Over the next few weeks the extent of the damage became apparent culminating in MCL/ACL surgery in Orange County in March. We stayed down there into May and I successfully started jogging nearly every day. This was fortunate as I got a 2-week notice of an opportunity to compete in Expedition Oregon with Tower Racing. I was about as good as I was going to get as far as jogging went but I really ramped things up with some big uphill rides including one up Santiago Peak that was 76 miles and over 10,000 feet of elevation gain. I also scrambled to build a bike box and set up Iris to survive in my absence before driving up to Oregon. Expedition Oregon was quite an adventure with hundreds of miles covered by packraft, foot, and bicycle over some 103 hours on probably under 7 hours of sleep. The ranking got a little messy on the last day as most teams had to skip mandatory points to finish but we came in 14th out of 36 teams that started. Since I was already sort of trained up and maybe recovered I agreed to do the Mammoth to Bishop 36 hour adventure race in early June. I didn't do much additional training for that, but we ended up placing a strong second out of about 30 teams. We pushed pretty hard and managed to either do a good job of navigating or didn't let mistakes set us back too much.
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A few weeks later I wasn't really fully recovered for a trip into the Minarets where I hurt a finger. In July Iris was able to do some slow careful day hiking and I went along as well as trying to ramp up for the Sierra Challenge in August. I started out big on day 1 of the Challenge but then was pretty tired for most of it. I did manage to come in second for the yellow jersey, first for the green, and probably first or tied for the aqua jersey. Iris was able to join the fishermen each day catching a lot of trout in the process. By the end of August we were dodging wildfire smoke and heat and doing some hikes and bike rides near Mammoth.
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In the fall Iris got a new project manager job with increased responsibility and hours to go with it. She also got an Element and we spent a lot of time working on that. I got an e-bike. In November we combined Iris needing to fly for work with a desert trip and then did the same with an even longer trip in December south of Vegas. Iris is able to hike and barely jog but nowhere near her pre-accident level yet. My climbing took a pretty bad hit with the lockdown and then months off in the OC and adventure racing so we both have plenty of things to work on in 2022.
I was able to fly out of Bishop to Boston for a family Christmas in January. The second flight got delayed about 6 hours but I made it. Conveniently Iris was able to combine a work trip to join for the end of the visit.
In February we hiked in to the Grand Canyon for a few nights at Phantom Ranch and then spent some time in Flagstaff before some more desert peaks near Vegas.
Good things about the last 2 years - Iris getting to work from home (Bishop and Orange County), quite a bit of peak bagging - over 400 peaks since the start of 2020, although plenty were pretty insignificant, and getting to be together while hunkered down in whatever variation of quarantine was in effect. Not so good were limited climbing, Iris' knee injury, wildfire smoke, and various quarantines and shutdowns.
As usual you can see some trip reports and pics (although sadly not very complete) on this web page - go to the index page below