Spot the Mid-life Gladiator: Duke It or Puke It
And so begins one of my dumbest less brilliant ideas. 14 stages. Each stage number is the target distance in miles and the target summit elevation in thousands of feet, 14k being the highest one can go in California. But also the stage number of burpees every mile, so while stage 7 is a measly 49 burpees, stage 14 is not double, but 14x14 = 196 burpees. Sounds fun, right?
The first challenging aspect of this project is naming it. I asked for suggestions but no one seemed to take advantage of the fact that my name rhymes with puke but also means poop. I took inspiration from an oft repeated saying in the ultra world, “PR or ER” and came up with “Duke It or Puke It”. It’s such a great name that (a) it could be applied to just about any effort, and (b) we have to make this an annual event. Indeed.
The next challenging aspect of this project is finding the trails. Even for stage 1, I had to search far and wide to find a trail that reached 1,000 feet elevation in a half mile, or 2,000 ft in one mile. Our local mountains here get to 7,000 ft but could I find a trail of the proper length, with appreciable ascent? The answer was largely no. And how far would I have to go for the 9,000+ ft mountains? More than my supreme spouse would like, I’m afraid.
The Ojai Mountains.
August 17. Stages 1 and 2. These felt pretty ridiculous. I started with Stage 2 on the Sisar trail. Two reps of burpees, a mile uphill +368 ft, 2 more burpees and return. Less than a half hour later, Fritz and I were done. A path for Stage 1 was hard to find but I did manage to find a trail that started at 885 ft and climbed to 1160 in a half mile. Close enough. One burpee at the start. Posting these 1 and 2 mile runs on Strava felt ridiculous. An hour and a half of driving for 2 runs, 45 minutes and 3 burpees. So stupid.
August 20. Stage 4. Yeah, we’re out of order. This whole trial is out of order (cue Al Pacino). Because I didn’t know where to do stage 3, there might have been a few options, but I only had one for stage 4. The Ortega trail, so named because of how spicy it is. Lots of loose rocks, stupid steep and usually way too hot. That Fritz and I ran it on a weekday afternoon, even spicier.
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| Dogmeat? You mean Frizzlemeat? |
September 7. Stage 5. I never thought to look at this local trail until now. From the Rose Valley campground, the fire road up to Nordhoff ridge is exactly 2.5 miles and gets to 5,037 feet. Perfect! It feels just like good old Dogmeat at an average 13% gradient, but longer. I wonder if I could do this ten times?
The Malibu Mountains.
August 24. Stage 3. The only climb I would do in the Malibu mountains, which only has a single summit hitting 3,000 feet and conveniently with a 1.5 mile trail to it. This trail is also the site of my pink run. Just 9 burpees total, got it over with quickly.
The Traverse Ranges
August 28. Stage 8. Frazier Peak. Mt. Pinos. Two hours from home, north of Ojai lies the town of Frazier Park and Mt. Pinos, at close enough to 9,000 ft. I didn’t realize there was this other thing called Frazier Peak until this project. I started Frazier Peak after work, at 8pm, at what seems like a lovely, and empty, campground. Might have to come back when I can see it. Neat forested fire road and runnable at less than 10%. I tried to start stage 9 at Mt. Pinos shortly after at 11pm. I was uncomfortably cold, even at 55F, so I had to abort. I believe I was sick that night. Not just sick in the head. Map search for another 9er continues.
The San Gabriel Mountains.
There is some serious elevation just outside of L.A. I hadn’t done any of these other than Mt. Baldy, so this called for some map exploration.
Strawberry Peak at night 
The real prize is all the friends we made along the way
August 22. Stages 6 and 7. Strawberry Peak and Mt. Wilson in the San Gabriels. I tried to piece together some trails that were close together so I could do two in one day to save myself some driving and to get the project before winter. Also, to avoid traffic, and mid-day heat, I decided to do these at night. I started up Strawberry Peak at 9pm. Came across a rattlesnake on the trail by 9:02. After solving its riddle, the next hour was just as creepy. A spotlight highlighting the long legged spiders criss-crossing the trail. Fun. I also did not clue in this was the “mountaineers” route and required some decent bouldering. C’est la vie a la nuit. A full three hours later, I finished the 6 miles and went on to the 7 miler. The challenge was driving the mountain roads at night. The trail was much easier, even with the 49 burpees after the previous 36. Camped out in the car for a few hours to save myself from driving tired at 2am.
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| Moon finally came up, a bit late for me at Baden-Powell |
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| Baldy Bowl at sunrise |
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| Mt. Baldy summit and some sleepy campers |
September 13. Stages 9 and 10. After some time off for our wedding anniversary, it was time to resume the project. I found the 9er and it was next to the 10er. Unfortunately, it was on opposite sides of the mountain range. I again drove after work and traffic to the north side of the San Gabriels to the Vincent Gap trailhead to climb the 9,100 ft Mt. Baden-Powell. 8 miles round trip and +2700 ft. Spicy. I started at 9pm under a moonless sky, enjoying the stars above LA. The moon came up as I was descending. We’re on opposite schedules, I guess. With a 90 minute drive around to the south side of the mountain range for Mt. Baldy, I decided to rest up first, again sleeping in the car for a couple hours. By the time I started up Mt. Baldy, it was still dark nearly 5am. I’ve taken 5 different routes up to the summit of Baldy and I found a pair that matched up to 10 miles. 4 miles to climb up 4,000 ft and 6 miles down. Get the climbing over with. Smart! When someone saw me doing burpees on the Devil’s Backbone, they asked what I was doing? Raising money for charity? Raising awareness for mental health? For mine? Anyway, it was nice to watch the rest of sunrise from the summit and I did finish in nearly my usual time of just over 4 hours even with the added burpees. The hardest part of this whole trip was driving home through Saturday traffic. L.A. C’est la vie à la circulation.
Peninsular Ranges
September 27. I had some concerns that one stage a week would take me into mid-October and that weather could hamper attempts at the higher elevations. So I accelerated stage 13 and considered putting stage 11 last. But that didn’t play out in the real world. San Jacinto is a three hour drive - a one day trip would be exhausting so again I opted for a night drive, first getting late night tacos in Banning, arriving at the trailhead around midnight. Whether I start right away or wait until morning was a game day decision, and I opted to sleep it off first but still starting well before sunrise at 4am. With thunderstorms in the forecast, I wanted to be done before noon. The summit was fogged in, leaving its famous desert and city vistas to the imagination. The previous week’s rains kept the forest floor dust-free. I wanted to bring Fritz but dogs are only allowed in the federal forests and not the state forests. Weird, right?
Eastern Sierras
To get to 12,000 ft or higher, the last 3 stages would have to climb some serious mountains in the Sierra Nevada range. I had a couple potential trails picked out in our national parks, but access to the Eastern Sierras is considerably easier.
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| Kearsarge Pass in the distance |
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| Spot the summit of Mt. gould |
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| Matlock Lake |
September 20. Stage 13. West of the town of Independence lies the Onion Valley and the trail to Kearsarge Pass. The pass alone is at nearly 12,000 ft. There is a ridge to a 13er peak from there so I felt like I had the option of either. If the conditions were good I could summit the 13er, if not, just turn around at 12. But start with 13 rep burpees just in case. After work on a Friday, I drove a few hours and camped out in the car. I could get used to these starry desert skies. First day hike/run in a while, I didn’t start until 7:30am. What luxury! The trail is absolutely gorgeous and the clouds darting in and out of the mountains were stunning. I felt great at the pass so I thought I’d make the summit. Didn’t feel great for too long. That ridge was rocky and sandy and climbed 1200 ft in a half mile. The very top of Mt. Gould requires a dash of spicy class 3 scrambling (watch here) but scramble I did and scratch a 13er off my list. That’s one less worry going into October. And what a view from the top! I added a side quest to a different lake to get to 13 miles and that view was even better! Onion Valley had me in tears.
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| Consultation Lake |
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| At Trail Crest |
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| Looking down on Lone Pine Lake, still 1600 ft above the trailhead |
October 2. Stage 14. OK, so Kilian Journet can summit a dozen California 14ers in 56 hours, I just had to climb one in 10 or so. Easy, right? But Korean Journet, am I not. I had once before, so I thought I could rawdog a 14er, Mt. Whitney, without any acclimation, but it turns out I can’t. After 13,000, I started to get a headache and some nausea. Dry heaved it a few times, so I played it safe and turned around at Trail Crest at 13,600 ft. Close enough to 14 and well beyond the 7 mile one-way distance. The next challenge was when could I resume sets of 14 burpees? The answer - too soon for comfort. A few hundred feet above Trail Camp, I cranked out my 8th set of burpees, albeit slowly. I couldn’t eat the entire second half of the course, having eaten all of two wafers and two gels all day. My body got used to being food deprived though (follow me if you want to save money on Ozempic) and eventually the downhill and the burpees came chugging along as if I was meant to suffer like this. Nietzsche was right. Ten hours, 18 miles, +5400 ft.
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| Ain't no way Fritz is climbing that |
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| Brainerd Lake |
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| One tired Frizzler |
October 12. Stage 12. Final stage. I had a couple options but I chose one where I could take Fritz. He hadn’t accompanied me since stage 5! Again up highway 395. Again camping in the car. For the 5th week in a row. But Fritz didn’t sleep well. He kept waking up to phantom noises so we didn’t get much sleep before our 4am wake-up call. We still had a 90 minute drive to the trailhead in Big Pine. This is the home of the famous turquoise water Big Pine Lakes. Fortunately, we were taking the less travelled south fork and then the even less travelled sub-fork to Willard Lake and Mt. Still. The last trail is so less travelled that it’s entirely covered in pine needles and impossible to see other than an occasional reassuring broke-ass cairn. We got less than a mile into this trail until we came up to a tasty rock scramble climb. Fritz was having none of it. So no 12er today. We could take the rest of the south fork but trail math would keep us from a 12er on this alternate route. So we opted to just get to Brainerd Lake and call it close enough. Fritz led our way back on the overgrown section and then up the visible trail to the lake. He tried to jump into a smaller pond, but just cracked the ice and slid across. Did I mention it was 35F at the start of the day? Eventually got to the lake, which we had to ourselves. We still wouldn’t see anyone for another hour. All in all, a great day to end the project.
By October 14th, a storm was forecasted to come into the area dumping multiple feet of snow at anything higher than 9,000 ft, so I got the project done just in time.
109 miles, 1,015 burpees, 35,000 ft. 46 hours.
Would I do this again? With a name like Duke It or Puke It, how could I not? I got to do a lot of exploration for this project. 8 of the 14 stages were new trails. I have mixed feelings on the burpee part of this. They’re actually a bit of a respite during the runs, but at the same time, probably added the equivalent of 1,000 ft of vert on stage 14. I don’t even do burpees the rest of the year. Until I actually summit Mt. Whitney, maybe hold off on the extra spice. Good idea? Yes. That means I probably won’t do it.
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