This was a long weekend.

The AMP13 rappel day was Saturday and the setup requires waking up painfully early to meet up with Jack, get to Chatsworth, and set up 6 separate rappel stations complete with separate belay anchors.  By the time the students show up around 8 I'd already been up 5 hours.  Actually teaching the course was a ball like always and I managed to stay coherent through the post class meal.

Needless to say by the time I got home I pretty much showered and passed out immediately.  Only to wake up at 3 am, quickly throw together a daypack, and then drive out to meet John Slagle and Mark Butski at a local carpool point so we could drive 3 hours to Sheep Hole Mountain north of 29 Palms.

Fortunately John was up for doing the driving.

April 24th, 2016

Sheep Hole Mountains HP (4,613')

[Pics] [Map]

This was the first "real" hike I'd been on since Knee Surgery 2015.

Prior to this I had done a snow travel outing with my WTC group and a number of short local hikes but I was anxious to get back out.  The last 6 months of being laid up had taken a toll on my sanity.

I picked this peak almost at random while looking around on Peakbagger.  I'm getting low on DPS peaks I need and I really wanted a two day desert trip with a car camp in between.

Clipper is just south of the infamous Edgar and Mitchell Peaks and Providence Benchmark nearby looked to make a decent pairing with it.

As I posted on Facebook that morning:
"Middle of nowhere, parked in an abandoned dump, about to do a long slog for a seldom visited bump of no particular significance. All is right with the world. -ish"

March 26th, 2016

Clipper Mountain (4,593')

[Pics] [Map]

This is part of a series of entries covering my fall back in 2011, surgery in 2015, and my recovery immediately afterwards. If you came here directly the rest of the entries can be found here.

The 6 week post op visit was another milestone with the doctor clearing me to finally start bending past 90 degrees (which is a bigger deal than you'd think if you haven't had this sort of surgery...)

See below the break for a running total of the costs associated with the procedure.

This is part of a series of entries covering my fall back in 2011, surgery in 2015, and my recovery immediately afterwards.  If you came here directly the rest of the entries can be found here.

Below covers the day of the surgery and the first five days of recovery.

This is the first in a series of entries I'm planning to write about my experience (hopefully) recovering from a knee injury I sustained back in 2011.  Since I'm going to be recovering from surgery any new trip reports will just be from the backlog I haven't had time to finish (of which there are unfortunately a large number)

This entry details the events immediately following a 25 foot fall deep in the Sierra and my subsequent helicopter evacuation and hospital visit.

For the events of the 6 days 9 peaks leading up to the fall see here.

For what came after and my eventual knee surgery 4 years later see here.

[Pics] [Map]

This trip was planned as a 9 day clean-out of the Kaweah range area deep in the Sierra. It effectively ended on day 6 when I took a bad fall and had to be helicoptered out.

This will just cover the rather excellent climbing trip leading up to that event.

August 20th to 27th, 2011

Mount Kaweah (13,802')

Second Kaweah (13,661')

Black Kaweah (13,680')

Red Kaweah (13,720')

Lawson Peak (13,120')

Kaweah Queen (13,382')

Mount Stewart (12,200')

Lion Rock 12,360')

Triple Divide Peak (12,634')

[Pics] [Map]

For the story of the fall itself click here.

For the more on the long term effects and eventual knee surgery click here for the recovery diary