A real progression, in stages. Six steps from a flat road in Los Angeles to a roped traverse in the Sierra. This page is the map — where I started, where I am now, and what's still in front of me.
It started with a knee. In late 2023 I was thirty, soft, and had just torn something in my left knee trying to drag a coffee table up the stairs of a second-floor apartment. The orthopedist's verdict was "mild," but the appointment had the tone of a warning. So I started running. Not because I loved it — I bought shoes because the alternative was watching myself become someone I didn't recognize.
The first run was 1.2 miles. I had to stop twice. The second run was a week later because everything hurt. The third run was the next morning, because I'd already paid for the shoes and didn't want to feel like an idiot. That was January 2024. Within a few months I'd run my first 5K, then a 10K, then a slow half marathon on a foggy Sunday in Long Beach.
Somewhere between mile 8 and mile 9 of that half marathon, I thought: what else can a body do?
That question turned out to be expensive. I started reading about people who ran up mountains for fun. People who slept in tents in the snow. People who climbed rock with ropes and people who climbed rock without ropes. The internet, as ever, was an excellent enabler. I bought a guidebook. I drove to Mount Baldy. I made it to the top and then I made it back down and I felt — for maybe the first time in my adult life — like I had actually used a day.
From there it was a slow re-orientation. The running shoes stayed. They became my approach shoes. Then there were boots. Then microspikes. Then trekking poles I felt slightly silly carrying. Then a real backpacking pack, which I felt much less silly about. The first time I slept above 10,000 feet, I didn't sleep at all. The second time I slept fine. The body adjusts.
In 2025 I summited my first California 14er — Mount Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48. I came down with a clearer goal than I went up with: do them all. That decision turned into Project King of Cali — a 3-year plan to summit every California 14er across 2026 through 2028. Whitney is one. Fourteen to go.
This site is the receipt. It's the trip reports, the gear notes, the training that worked and the training that didn't. It's also a public stake in the ground — the long-term goal is alpine mountaineering. Real alpine. Roped, exposed, technical, in the snow. That's still years away. But the road there has six stages, and you're looking at the map.
Every outdoor discipline builds on the one before it. You don't skip rungs — or if you do, you pay for it later. This is the ladder, mapped honestly. Stage 2 is where I am right now.
For each stage: what it taught me (or will teach me), the milestones that mark it complete, the gear and skills it requires, and which trips on the site correspond to it.