A Desert Adventure With a Plan For 2027 - Bonus
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To create a good life, you need time and space to clear the head and create the vision.
In this bonus ep, we lay out the full day-by-day plan for our Joshua Tree trip and explain why we built it to create both adventure and a real plan for the year ahead. We also break down how the training, accountability, and group talks work so you can show up confident and leave sharper.
• Arrival flow from Palm Springs and why the first night matters
• Daily rhythm of workouts, meals, and structured group talks
• Ryan Mountain as the sunset warm-up hike and a gear test
• Quail Mountain as the big headlamp summit day and how we manage safety, layers, and pacing
• Sauna and cold plunge as optional recovery tools
• Three-month training plan with weekly hikes, a scrimmage hike, and strength work for hiking durability
• Bi-weekly coaching calls plus WhatsApp accountability and support
• What’s included on the trip and what you need to book yourself
If you have questions and are interested in the trip, shoot us an email, [email protected], or check out the trip page here.
Or you can find the link to the trip website in the show notes.
Why This Bonus Call Matters
SPEAKER_01 0:04
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, Tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community, and most importantly, your family. All right, what's up, guys? This is a quick bonus episode. It's a recording of a call that Craig and I ran last week about our Joshua Tree trip that's coming up in February. I thought the recording, I'd use it here because we talk a lot about these adventure trips on the podcast, but we haven't really described what each day looks like and why we create the agendas that we create. This is going to give you a flow of what the trip is like and what you can expect. And the Joshua Tree trip is a little different from Grand Canyon and Yosemite. It's at the start of the year, and we're going to use this time away from our day-to-day routines, being in this beautiful part of the year to start thinking strategically about the year ahead. And we make time in our business every year to plan the upcoming year, but we don't do that in our lives. So on this trip, Craig and I were building a framework so that when you leave Joshua Tree, you're going to leave with a plan of what you're going to create for the rest of the year. Two quick notes on the call, we did have the trip website pulled up, and we also had the All Trails website where we use the hiking maps and the details of the hike. That's not going to be on the audio recording here, but the message still lands. So take a listen. If you have questions and are interested in the trip, shoot us an email, info at TommyGcoaching.com. Or you can find the link to the trip
Arrival Day And First Group Talk
SPEAKER_01 1:58
website in the show notes. Next week, we'll be back with the regular type of podcast episodes. But right now, check out the Joshua Tree information call. All right. So Joshua Tree, California, February 8th through the 12th. If you guys are interested in the trip, you're here to learn. So you've probably looked at this website once or twice. I'm going to go through the day-to-day itinerary and then also the two hikes we're going to do. Day one, arrive. We're going to fly into Palm Springs. Craig's going to talk about the training and the lead up, but this is Monday, February 8th. So we've been talking together for a couple months by then. We've been working out, we've been getting in shape for this trip. And then we land in the California desert in Palm Springs. It's the first time we all get together. As the group comes together, we're talking and booking flights. We'll figure out the timing because it's about a 45-minute drive. I think it's about a 45-hour long drive from Palm Springs to our place in Joshua Tree. So that day of arrival will crew up at the airport. One of the things on these trips is right, we we're guys are doing something new. Most days are even keel, same thing. Like this is going to be something new. It's something different. We don't know the guys that we're going to be traveling with. And the trips that Craig and I have run before, we hear guys have a little like, what's it going to be like? What are these guys going to be like? How's it going to be? As soon as we all land and we see each other face to face, it's simpatico. And we're in cars and we're driving and we're chatting. The trip really like kicks off. You feel it. And so we'll check into our place. I'll just scroll down. This is our house. High-end spot. You can read about all the amenities, but we'll check in here and we'll just take it easy the rest of the day. It'll be a travel day for everybody. We'll cook dinner at the house and we'll have our first group talk, which I'll I'll dive into what these group talks are going to be in a little bit. But that's
Ryan Mountain Sunset Hike Plan
SPEAKER_01 4:24
day one. Day two. We wake up first morning and we're going to get a morning workout in. The training that Craig's going to talk about, that's going to prepare you guys for whatever type of workout we're going to do. It's going to be something led by Craig or I. We're going to be outside, think of HIT training, some interval stuff, something that's going to get your heart rate up, body weight movement. Then we'll dive into breakfast and we'll have some type of group talk. And again, I'm going to come back to the group talks. You'll see this day, there's a lot of extra time. So the agenda will come together as we get closer to the trip. But what we're going to do is we're going to hike Ryan Mountain at sunset. I'll pull up Ryan Mountain. It'll be a good warm-up hike for Quail Mountain. This website that I have right up here is All Trails. So it's an app. It's the app that we use. There's other hiking apps out there, but we we use All Trails. Real quick specs of Ryan Mountain. So it's rated as hard. And it's not hard because of the length. It's a three-mile hike, but the elevation in that short amount of time, you can see right away you start hiking in a mile and a half, you go up a thousand feet to the top of Ryan Mountain. What we'll think of here is that the training that we're going to do is going to prepare us to get ready for this hike. It's going to be our first opportunity to be in the park. Joshua Tree National Park, I was just talking, I was telling Craig I was talking to a buddy that has been there a bunch of times, and he was really excited about us bringing a group there because it's one of his favorite places in the world. This day, on day two, we'll probably head to the park earlier to go to some other places. There's some other places called like the Hidden Valley and a couple other cool rock formations. We'll go to the visitor center and we'll do some exploring, but we're going to time that Ryan Mountain hike out to be out there in the desert at sunset. And that's going to be really cool. So we'll have our headlamps ready to go to hike out after we enjoy the beautiful colors in the desert at sunset. On the way back, because the sun will set pretty early in February, we're going to have dinner in Joshua Tree. And there's a couple different places that Joshua Tree, the town, it's there's not much there. It's supposed to be like a really cool, eclectic place. So I'm I'm excited to be there. There's a place called the Joshua Tree Saloon, and then a famous place called uh Happy and Harriet's. So we'll look at those two places. And then in the evening, we'll see what the timing looks like. But some type of stretching mobility workout to wind down the evening. That's day
Group Talks, Sauna, Cold Plunge
SPEAKER_01 7:18
two. Day three. Day three right now, it's wake up, morning workout, breakfast, group talk. So these group talks. Craig and I have run three of these trips now, and Richard's been on the trips with us. What happens on these trips is that we sign up because we want this new experience. We want something on our calendar that's gonna keep us focused and get in shape and get prepared so we can be active for the full week. And these conversations start happening between guys. You just get to know each other. Craig kind of mentioned it a little bit about our reunion call with the Yosemite group. And the group talks that we're gonna be doing are just gonna be a little more structured. In on our past trips, they've been a little been loose and organic, and they just happen. And our goal is that this is the start of the year, it's 2027. We're gonna use this experience away from our day-to-day to think a little more expansively. And the goal is that these talks, by the end of the trip, you're like honed in with what 2027 is gonna look like. You're gonna know where you want to spend your time, where you want to spend your energy, and what that's gonna look like. So that's what the group talks are. Any questions about those? Or Craig, do you want to add anything about those?
SPEAKER_00 8:42
I was just thinking, that's really well said. I think about this trip, and it's a little bit unique and different than Grand Canyon, you know, Yosemite. Personally, if I was gonna pick a trip to do, this one really speaks to me because this is about bringing in some movement, whether it's through exercise or yoga or hikes, it's about bringing in some personal development, some personal reflection that we tip, you know, we do a little bit of that on the other trips. This one brings everything together. And then, of course, the camaraderie, the being in a group, being with other guys. If I was personally gonna go on a trip, this would be it. And then, of course, you get the destination of Joshua Tree. Um, I was saying to Tommy before the call, it's kind of like a wild card. I've never been there, I have no idea what to expect, but that's something that's really cool about this. You don't have any preconceived notions, I guess. Um, so you kind of get that wow and wonder of being in a new place. So that I was just thinking as you were talking, Tommy, about the format that we've created here. And I am just personally excited and pumped to like go and do this with you guys.
SPEAKER_01 9:55
Yeah, I think it's something that feels very natural in the progression of how we've been running these trips together. And these these outdoor experiences came because Craig and I do a lot of one-on-one coaching with men, and we've found that the next unlock after men have started to explore their mindset and their personal development is getting out of the day-to-day and going and doing something like this. So the group talks, there'll be a good arc to them and a flow. Now, another thing I'm excited about are these cold plunges and the sauna. So we're gonna bring in a remote or what do they call it, a mobile sauna, and they have cold plunges at the place. So we'll play around with that for some recovery gear check, team meeting, dinner. Wednesday, right now, the plan is to be at the place all day, but we're gonna have cars. So if we want to go explore Joshua Tree and have lunch out there, but in the evening, we're gonna be waking up super early on Thursday morning for the Quail Mountain hike because we're gonna start in the dark. So we're gonna start doing our gear check. We're gonna have a team meeting that just talks about the game plan for the next day and safety procedures and all the details, and then we'll have a team dinner kind of wrap up early so we can go to bed for an early start to hike quail mountain. That's day three. Any questions about the group talks or the cold plunges or saunas? It's all optional. I'll say that too. If you're like fuck cold plunges, I just want to be in the sauna, that's cool too. No, no, like get in there.
Quail Mountain Summit Day Strategy
SPEAKER_01 11:34
That's not how we roll. All right, wake up bright and early, Thursday morning, quail mountain. The the plan is we'll start hiking in our headlamps. It's an out and back, rated hard, just under 10 miles, 1,800 feet of elevation. You know, what we're thinking here, first off, is that we're gonna be in headlamps. So we will want to train and we'll have time as like the sun sets earlier right now and it rises later. When you're training, getting ready, you're gonna want to train with walking in the dark a little bit with your headlamp. If you've never done it before, or it's been a long time since you've done it, that'll be part of the training to get a couple steps in where you're testing your gear out. We'll have our hiking poles, um, our bags packed. This is 10 miles. And I don't want to get complacent about it. It's still a long day, it's still push. Still have to be prepared and trained and ready to go because we're out there in the desert. Now it's gonna be cold in the morning and it'll warm up in the middle of the day. So the layers that we're gonna be wearing, we're gonna be thinking about that. And at the top of Quail Mountain, it's the highest peak in the park. And the 360-degree views, it's gonna be kind of that like moment we're like, hell yeah, we made it to the top. On the way back out, I don't know exactly what time we'll finish, probably around like noon, maybe one o'clock, but we'll have the rest of the day to be hanging out, maybe back in Joshua Tree. And then in the evening, we'll kind of come together as a group and have a group dinner and celebrate, tell the war stories of the hike, wrap up the trip on this Thursday evening. And Friday is all about traveling home and we'll coordinate all of that. That's kind of how the week looks. Craig's gonna talk about the training and some of the other prep.
SPEAKER_00 13:26
Yeah. So, like Tommy said, the the hike is less than the Grand Canyon, it's less than Yosemite, but still a decent challenge. And we're
The Three-Month Training Build-Up
SPEAKER_00 13:38
gonna optimize and maximize every bit of Joshua Tree and and squeeze out of it the challenges that we can. Um, what one of the things I love most about these trips is when we get up early on the big hike day, it's like kind of getting ready for battle a little bit. You get your gear ready, everyone's adrenaline is kind of heightened, you're packing your bag, you drive to the trailhead, and then lamps are on. So I'm pumped for that. Um, should I jump into some of the training? Yeah. Okay. So, you know, what makes the program that we're we're building here unique is it's not just, okay, you book your flight, we show up on this date and and we hike. It's so much more than that. We're gonna start three months out. So we're gonna start on November 18th, approximately one month from today, on a Wednesday. That's when all the training is and the preparation is gonna happen. But it's that's gonna, it's not gonna end there. Think of this as almost like a year-long training program. We're gonna have quarterly calls after the trip, and the training is going to continue. If that's something that you are inspired to do, you have you want to set other goals for the rest of the year that are physical in nature. This is gonna be right up your alley. So think of this in two ways. The first way is we're preparing for the hike and the trip itself. So you're gonna get a full training program. There's two main hikes a week. One focuses on elevation, it's a little bit shorter, it's under an hour. That's typically on a Wednesday, but you can maneuver that however you want. And then there's a longer hike on the weekend. I typically put on the weekend because that's when guys have a little bit more time and flexibility. And the length of that hike is gonna start kind of um shorter and it's gonna ramp up to about five or six miles on average. You're never really gonna hike more than an hour and a half, two hours on the weekend. What's gonna happen though is we're gonna build in some scrimmage hikes. And these scrimmage hikes are longer hikes. There's only gonna be probably one before we do Joshua Tree because it's a shorter distance. The purpose of that hike really is to get everything straight: your food, your hydration, your gear, go on a long hike, see what you're capable of doing. And then that way, when we show up in Joshua Tree, you'll have a lot of confidence. Also included in the training program is strength training. It's a big part of what we do because we got to strengthen our muscles. We got to make sure they're they're they have capacity and resiliency to a long endurance, long endurance event. So we focus a lot on step ups and split squats, single leg stuff, goblet squats, so lower body, but then also upper body and core. So if you're if you don't have a training program right now, this is a huge benefit and bonus to this program and this trip. If you do have something right now, if you have some guys have worked with a personal trainer in the past, awesome. This is a good supplement. If you have your own program that you've been following, let's chat. Let's talk about how we can round it out with hiking specific training. Everything's delivered through an app that we use and you get to download the app. Um, you know, there is a body weight side. So if you don't have equipment, you can do this from your house. You don't need equipment. But if you have dumbbells, even better because most of the program incorporates dumbbell training. So you can pick and choose what you want to do. The app is really user-friendly, it's easy to use. You can track your progress if you want, enter your weights, enter any data that you want, syncs with all the wearable devices that you might have: Fitbit and Google Health, and Apple Health, and Whoop, and all of them. Okay. Kind of giving you a kind of a 10,000-foot view here. This will be our fourth trip. So we've we've leveraged every trip along the way to say, here's what's working, here's what guys need, here's where guys fall off, the training, here's how we pick them back up. So yeah, I'm I'm really excited about this fourth time around.
SPEAKER_01 17:47
Yeah, that I think what I would say to that, Craig's background is health
Accountability Calls And Group Chat
SPEAKER_01 17:52
and fitness. He's been a health and fitness coach and uh athlete his whole life. And I've been behind the scenes and seen what our first program was looked like to the Grand Canyon and how you've taken information from that, feedback from the guys, and changed it to the next Grand Canyon, change it to Yosemite and changing it for Joshua Tree. And it's there to fit guys that are busy, their schedules. It's there to like what equipment they have to keep it simple, very focused on the strength that you need to endure the hike. Right now we're in between trips and I don't have a workout plan right now, and I'm like a little lost.
SPEAKER_00 18:32
I don't know if we've talked about the the bi-weekly calls that are also included. So we meet every two weeks. We're gonna start on November 18th, which is a Wednesday, 8 p.m. Eastern time, 5 p.m. Pacific, and we meet every two weeks. Now over the Christmas holidays, we take a bit of a break, but we'll start back up in January. And this is where we talk about the training. How's it going? What are you doing? What obstacles are you encountering? Are you consistent? Are you know, and we kind of make sure that there's the accountability and the consistency piece there. So you're not just on your own.
SPEAKER_01 19:07
The the those coaching calls, like you said, Craig, we haven't started talking about them yet. They are there's that mix of the accountability because we'll check in with training, and those coaching calls will have prompts to start getting to know each other a little bit more and you know, being able to understand where other guys are at in their training. And usually guys are like, yeah, you know, I've tried this and this has kind of helped me in this situation, or man, I'm struggling with that too. Craig, can you talk about that a little bit? The other part of that are we have a WhatsApp chat that we also talk about training, accountability, and other kind of, you know, sometimes we just talk about pizza, but so I mean, the oh just to kind of wrap up the training piece, the the goal here in all of our trips is a safe and successful completion of the hike.
SPEAKER_00 19:56
And that's what I'm thinking about as I prepare everybody for this. You know, we do we don't we're not trying to run this or have a race or complete it in the fastest amount of time. It's one of those things where every there are lots of different abilities, and so we got to consider that as we prepare. So I do want to challenge the guys who are in better shape, make sure that they're being challenged, but also the guys who aren't in great shape and they're using this to get in great shape, that this brings them
What’s Included And How To Join
SPEAKER_00 20:24
along as well.
SPEAKER_01 20:25
So we got you know, the the what's included. Do we roll through what's included?
SPEAKER_00 20:30
Yeah, sure. So I I mean, man, I I've done a lot of different market research on on these kind of trips and what's out there. I think we offer a ton of value for what we charge and what's what we're doing here, all of the the training and the preparation, the training program, the app. We do bi-weekly calls uh starting November 18th, right up until the trip itself in February 8th. And then we're gonna do quarterly calls after that for the rest of the year. So that's all included. Then the trip itself, it includes accommodation, it includes ground transportation, it includes all of the meals while we're there, and of course the programming and the coaching that we do while we're on the trip, hot tubs, the coal plunges, all that stuff, or not the hot tub, the sauna. Provide gear guidance as well. So that's a big part of this, is you gotta know what gear you're gonna need. Tommy mentioned poles, shoes, uh hiking pack with a water bladder, make sure you're carrying your water. And then we talk about food, nutrition, and hydration all the way along. So it's end-to-end, everything's covered. You know, you just book your flight, that's what's not included. You book your flight, show up, and you're taken care of.
SPEAKER_01 21:39
That's the that's the info call with what's going on for the trip. And I guess I would just say that it's October right now. We're wrapping up 2026, the last quarter, and we're gonna kick off 2027 with this chance to go to Joshua Tree, California, where it's supposed to be. The guy that I was talking to earlier, he's like the rock formations are just wild, and it's like you're on another planet. Craig was saying, just to go somewhere new that you don't know exactly what to expect, and pictures don't tell the whole story. That's the adventure we're gonna go on, and it's ready for you guys.
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