From the freeway to the alpine

The starting line was a gym in March 2024. I had genuinely never thought about running for fun. The membership was a hedge against becoming someone I didn't want to be. I just wanted to start moving. The workouts started feeling good within a month, and by June I'd run a 5K mostly to find out whether I could. On the way home from that 5K I started looking up marathons, mostly to see what was on the calendar. The California International Marathon (point-to-point Folsom to downtown Sacramento, December) was the one that caught me. I signed up. Five months of an actual training plan.

In November I ran the Santa Barbara half as a tune-up. Perfect weather, beautiful course, finished in 1:40. To this day it's still my favorite course I've run. A month later I drove up to Sacramento for the CIM. Race-morning buses to the start line in the dark with the headlights off was the moment I first felt like an actual runner. I finished in 3:47. My first marathon. On that bus I'd been talking to a guy who had just done his first triathlon and made it sound interesting; I filed that away. By March I'd run the LA Marathon too. Undertrained, slower than CIM, and I had a great time anyway.

I wanted to keep climbing. I wanted to keep raising the ceiling.

Then in April 2025 the email arrived. I'd won a Mt. Whitney day permit in the lottery. Something I'd been applying for every year. Suddenly the summer had a centerpiece. I started reading about altitude, acclimatization, and what it actually takes to train for a 14er when your longest hike to date is a flat 5K. I picked two SoCal warm-ups: Mt. Wilson in May, Mt. Baldy in June. Wilson out of Sierra Madre, the Cosmic Cafe at the top, six and a half hours of feeling like I'd earned an iced tea. Baldy a month later was harder. Devil's Backbone, ten thousand feet, the highest point in LA. I stood up there and realized I was about to be on top of Mt. Whitney in three weeks.

The same summer, the triathlon I'd signed up for back in spring came due. The running was easy. The biking was fine. The swimming (especially open-water swimming in cold Pacific) was an experiment that ended pretty quickly. I'd never formally learned how to swim, didn't enjoy practicing it alone, and the ocean confirmed it. Useful data point: not every endurance discipline is for me.

On July 8, 2025 I hiked Mt. Whitney in a single day. Whitney Portal at 4am, the summit hut at the top, back to the car by evening. It was the proudest day of my life and I knew it as it was happening. From a gym membership sixteen months earlier to the highest point in the lower 48. The math of it was disorienting. I came down with a clearer goal than I'd gone up with: I wanted to keep climbing.

February 2026 I ran my first trail race. Boney Mountain in Newbury Park. My legs weren't ready and my time reflected it, but I loved everything about it. The trail running community is different. The events are quieter. The people are weirdly kind. By the Point Mugu Trail Race in April my time had jumped meaningfully, and I knew trail running was going to be part of this thing from then on.

The bigger ambition has always been the Seven Summits and the famous Himalayan peaks: Aconcagua, Denali, Mt. Everest. But those mountains live on the other side of forty days off work and a hundred thousand dollars. They're a someday goal, not a now goal. What I needed was a project that fit inside the life I actually have. Project King of Cali (all 15 California 14ers, by the end of 2028) fits. I can do it on long weekends, mostly out of one rental car, mostly with gear I already own. And the order of the peaks is roughly the order of how hard they get, which makes the project a real curriculum: easy ones early, sustained Class 3 in the middle, the technical Palisades traverse last. I should come out the other side ready to rope up on something serious.

2026 has three trips on the calendar: Mt. Williamson + Mt. Tyndall via Shepherd Pass in late July, Mt. Whitney + Mt. Muir paired in early August, then White Mountain Peak + Mt. Langley to close the month. Whitney is a re-summit. The same permit that started this whole thing, this time with Muir's Class 3 scramble at Trail Crest as the back half. That's the plan. The rest of this site is the receipt.