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After returning to CA from MA we did a trip out to Joshua Tree for some climbing and peakbagging and then I drove north to Bishop. On the way I stopped at a traffic light and was rear-ended by a vehicle traveling fast enough to launch me into the car in front of me. Nobody was seriously injured but this damaged both my front and rear bumpers and some of the body panels of my truck. I was able to drive home though and start the process that still won't be complete by the start of 2026. The rest of the month brought a trip to Death Valley plagued by mice (the back of the truck was damaged enough to no longer be mouse proof), and Iris had to go in to the office to satisfy the whims of petulant billionaires ending nearly 4 years of getting to mostly be together. After repeatedly calling and sending and resending stuff to the insurance (the problem was the insurance of the vehicle that hit me - who after months finally decided not to cover the accident as the driver was not the owner) it became clear that the insurance wasn't going to repair my truck. I had $3,000 worth of uninsured motorist coverage myself - not enough to fix everything back the way it was, so they declared it totaled. I kept the truck and worked on it myself replacing the bent bumpers and fixing the one broken turn signal. I also replaced the starter motor which was no longer reliable (turns out that was probably a bad wire connection and not a bad starter - oops). Through the spring we did shorter trips and I tried to stay in shape climbing. I also did a bit of a death march hike of the Lonesome Miner Trail with Chris. In May we went down to Mexico to hike Picacho Diablo (the highest peak in Baja) with Chris and Tom. In preparation for a trip to Washington we did some long weekend trips up some local higher peaks.
At the end of June I drove up to Washington where I picked Iris up at the airport and met up with Chris to climb Rainier and Liberty Cap and then hike in to climb Mount Olympus and finally climb Mt Shuksan via the Fisher Chimneys route. We were quite lucky to get mostly good weather for these peaks. Back in California we did a few more local peaks before the Sierra Challenge. This year was the 25th anniversary and repeated the peaks from the first year - bonus - they are all significant peaks - not so great - I had already done most of them, so I mostly picked nearby peaks I had not yet done. I ended up not doing as many miles or gain as the listed peaks, but I did do quite a bit more serious scrambling and even some real rock climbing along the way.
A few weeks after the challenge we backpacked in to the Devils Crags area for more peaks. This was a pretty exhausting trip, but perhaps good training. When I got out from this trip I got a call asking if I could replace an injured teammate for Orienteering Utah for the ARWC -Adventure Racing World Championships. I even had about 3 weeks to prepare. I mostly did bike riding in prep squeezing it in when the air was clear between bouts of wildfire smoke. Then drove up to Penticton BC for the race. We were bused to Pemberton and returned some 800 km to Penticton via mountain bike, foot, and packraft. We took nearly all of the 9+ day allowed time and finished last ending up placing 37th out of 54 teams (other teams didn't successfully complete as much of the course).
It took a few weeks to want to do anything other than eat and sleep after that, but eventually I did a few more peaks and then despite the fact that Iris kept getting told to work some of the time during the govt shutdown we went on a road trip to Arizona to climb Mt Humphreys and hike in the Grand Canyon and near Sedona before returning to CA. There was a lot of working either in a house or on the side of a peak but we also got to do some fun hiking, scrambling, and climbing. We also did another trip to the desert before flying back to Boston for a family visit to end out the year. This also brings me back to the saga of the truck. I sent in the check for registration before the adventure race, but didn't get the tags, so I called them and eventually someone said the tags would come in 2 weeks. About 2 weeks later while I was in AZ they called and said I wouldn't get the tags, I'd have to get a salvage title because in CA if your insurance doesn't want to pay enough to repair your vehicle it gets declared salvage - so back in CA I tried to do that, but I needed a special inspection that nobody within 200 miles did, so I tried to do it down south, but first I needed to clear a 2001 recall, meanwhile I got a parking ticket because the plates were expired... I did finally get the VSSI done, and then the DMV said I needed my old title and a smog check... I'll deal with that in January.
Peakbagger says I climbed 206 peaks - I did a few not on PB and some of the PB ones I did do are pretty lame. I also rock climbed some 83 days and did one massive adventure race.
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As usual follow the link to the Index Page to find trip reports for some of these activities