When roads are closed to motorists they become great for bicyclists. A case in point is Highway 1 at Big Sur which has landslides thanks to the state's incompetent highway engineers which have been taking place for many decades, year after year after year. Buut it is heavenly for bicyclists when this section of road is closed to motorists.
I toured the Calfornia coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains with my camping gear and a 10 speed bicycle with little difficulty. I simply had one very large cog with 28 teeth to use with my 45T small chainring and I could go up anything. Today I would be using a 32T or 34T large cog on my cassette for those conditions. In the past the rear derailleurs were limited to handling much smaller cogs than what became available with the advent of mountain bikes. On my road e-bike I went the opposite route and put on a cassette with a smaller range (11-34t instead of 11-42t) and replaced the long cage rear derailleur with a medium cage one.
It does not matter for general riding if there is a big gap in gearing between the two largest cogs at the rear. Unless one is racing there is no need for tight spacing and needing 22 gears available. What I have found important is having a close spread at the middle range for riding on hilly terrain and a tall enough gear to be able to pedal on downhill sections to provide more momentum on the next hill section.
For some reason people think that the human body has changed over the past 30 years and today they need more gears to be able to negotiate the terrain, which also has not changed over the years.