Despite COVID’s impact throughout 2021, and my personal ups and downs, it was a good year overall. December was especially eventful with hikes, runs, swimming, rock climbing, and volunteering with the Pima Animal Care Center.
I signed up for the Iceman Triathlon, which will be in February 2022, so started my cold open water swim training on the 6th at Patagonia Lake. Several years ago I was doing more cold water swimming, but since then I’ve lost about 12 pounds and now have much less tolerance. If I were a fast swimmer it would help, but at my pace I just don’t generate enough heat. Fortunately the Iceman swim is only 750 yards! I did my swim at Patagonia in neoprene shorts, a 2.5mm neoprene diving vest, sleeves and gloves. The water temperature was 56F at the shoreline. I only swam about 20 minutes, but enough to realize that I’ll probably need to wear a wetsuit for the race or I’d be too cold on the ride segment.
On Monday the 13th, I hiked Aravaipa Canyon (3rd time in 3 years) with friends Heidi Bunch and Gary Faulkenberry. The trees had lost more leaves than this same time in the previous 2 years; and our record monsoon season caused a lot of flooding in most our Arizona’s watersheds, which resulted in quite a bit of debris along the trail. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day, and we thoroughly enjoyed our 8 mile hike. I didn’t get a photo of the Coatimundi we saw crossing the water toward the end of our hike, but it was a joy to see!
On Saturday the 18th, Alastair and I, joined by my friend Lonnie Lominac, ran the Caribbean Christmas 5k at Tempe Town Lake. While I’ve been having problems with my knees off and on all year, and worse in the past couple of months, I felt great for race and even achieved a lifetime 5k PR and earned 2nd place in my age group! Perhaps taking some time off from running and regularly doing my physical therapy exercises has actually helped! Having Alastair and Lonnie pacing me certainly didn’t hurt. It was also wonderful to meet Lonnie’s new girlfriend, Denise and her 2 dogs.
The following day, Alastair, Lonnie, Denise and I did an REI Intro to Rock Climbing class in the McDowell Mountains. I did the same class two years ago and had such a blast that I went back a couple months later for the rappelling class, also great fun! Lonnie has done some climbing so it was easy to convince him to join us. The area where we climbing is a short walk from Tom’s Thumb trailhead to a place referred to as the Girlie Man Area (photo of climbing routes below). Our group climbed in areas 1-5. It was sunny and cool, perfect for climbing. I know we all had a great time and hope to do more in the future. Unfortunately, Alastair and I didn’t get any photos of us climbing since we were belaying for each other (definitely no hands free to use a camera!).
We left Phoenix on Monday the 20th, stopping for a late morning hike on the Arizona Trail just west of the town of Superior. We started at Picketpost trailhead and did a 6.5 mile out-and-back hike. We met one man who was doing a thru hike from south to north, and we wished him all the best. Based on his daily mileage, he’ll probably be going through the Grand Canyon in early January! This section of the AZT is Passage 17, and is 11.7 miles between Picketpost TH and just north of the Tonto National Forest boundary. The part we did wraps around to the west side of Picketpost Mountain and crosses Alamo Canyon. We had never been on this section before and found it very well-maintained and not difficult.
I recently decided to take a break from my part-time work at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and devote more time to volunteering. For the past few years I’ve been a volunteer with the Arizona Trail Association, doing trail maintenance, and I’ve always found it to be fun and very satisfying. I hope to do even more in 2022. Prior to COVID, I use to volunteer at Pima Animal Care Center (PACC) with a group called Ruff Runners, organized by Christy Hollinger. We would walk or run dogs on Tuesday evening and Friday mornings – it was usually great fun and low stress since Christy would brings the dogs out for us to walk and she’d return them to their kennels. Last month I decided to become an official volunteer at PACC, which required training and a number of hours of “jump start” activities (like doing laundry) before we could start walking dogs. Having now seen how much work goes on behind the scenes at PACC, I have an even great admiration than before for all the staff and volunteers! I’ve also signed up to volunteer at the Tucson Community Food Bank, starting next week. I’m looking forward to doing more for our community in 2022!
