The record.

Milestones, ideas, and what we learned. Not every fix.

September 25, 2026Live at hushcanyon.com — no longer only oursToday the guide stopped being something we opened on our own laptops. hushcanyon.com points at it now — the domain we bought four days ago, finally doing its job. Anyone can type the name and land in the quiet. It sounds like a small technical step. It didn’t feel small. Five days after the first commit, the thing has an address.Read the whole entry
Today the guide stopped being something we opened on our own laptops. hushcanyon.com points at it now — the domain we bought four days ago, finally doing its job. Anyone can type the name and land in the quiet. It sounds like a small technical step. It didn’t feel small. Five days after the first commit, the thing has an address.
What went out the door: thirty-four places, up from the twenty-five we opened with. Each place page now says who it’s for and who should probably skip it, how much effort the day really asks, and — where we have it — when we last checked the facts. All places has a map beside the list. Guides launched with thirteen essays: how the agencies behind hard tickets actually work, what to do the minute a window opens, what to do after you win. Before you go holds the apply checklist and the rules of thumb we keep repeating to ourselves.
Just as important is what didn’t go out. We built partner cards — gear and insurance we’d actually recommend, with stories from our own trips and cons on every card. They’re finished, and they’re switched off. Product first, commission second: a guide this new doesn’t need shopping links yet, and we’d rather earn trust with the free part before anything on the page could earn us money. When the traffic is real, we’ll turn them on and say so here. The Ko-fi tip we added two days ago is resting too, for now — it comes back when the guide has earned the traffic.
What we want it to feel like: the same as it did on September 18, when this was one sentence beside the other ideas — clarity before you apply. No bots. No odds theater. The agency page still wins. The only difference is that now it isn’t ours alone. If you found this page, you’re one of the first. Hello.
September 23, 2026Tip the field guide — clarity, not odds
The guide stays free. Tip & Leave a Note lives in two quiet places: the footer (Title Case, beside Our Story and the legal links) and a short ask at the end of Our Story — Leave a tip. No cup sticker, no fundraising bar. The modal is our chrome only: wordmark, what a tip is for, then Leave a tip on Ko-fi (new tab). What it is not: better odds, bots, a support desk. Checkout runs on Ko-fi; the statement shows Sunday Robbo.
September 22, 2026Make a plan — holidays decide the order
The original bet was simple: browse the parks you can only reach by lottery or scarce permit — then use a real holiday to decide where to apply this year. My Bookmarks got the first half right and stranded the second. A shortlist does not know your trip is the second week of July. It does not care that Whitney’s lottery already closed while Cadillac is still months out. We kept bumping into the same gap: people don’t only need places; they need an order.
So today Make a plan shipped. You pick the hard tickets you actually care about, put trip dates on them, and we build a sequence of apply steps with a plain-English why. One primary step per place — not a wall of every gate — and backups stay as asides, not fake urgency. When you’re done reading, you leave and finish on Recreation.gov or the agency page. We still do not apply for you. That line was in the first brief and it hasn’t moved.
The product feeling drove the wiring. Bookmarks and plans are different jobs, so they don’t share a URL anymore. Share my plan is a link with places and dates — treat it like a public note. One plan lives in this browser; Restart clears it; the header quietly becomes My plan once you’ve built something. Import bookmarks is a merge, not a takeover. From a place page you can say Use in a plan without throwing away what you already had.
Same day we also tightened the quieter half of trust: hard dates only when an Official note already said them out loud, and the scheduled refresh that fetches Rec.gov twice a month when a window is due. Automation may write a clear range. It does not invent lottery weeks. If it’s unsure, we get an Issue instead of a confident lie on the page. That matches how we’ve talked about data from day one — JSON in the repo, honest labels, agency page wins.
What we want it to feel like: less a dashboard of scarcity, more you and a calendar deciding what to attempt this year. If the plan is wrong, Edit. If the trip changed, Restart. If a friend asks what you’re going for, Share. Small verbs. Real dates. Hard tickets first — then this year’s plan.
September 20, 2026The guide opens — hard tickets, still choosing
Hush Canyon went from brief to something you can browse. Twenty-five places in All places, scattered on purpose so the map isn’t one park system in a costume — we’d talked about spreading across the country in case a map view came later. Six sit on the homepage as Most sought: The Wave first, then Enchantments, Half Dome, Maroon Bells, Angels Landing, Whitney. Maroon Bells is there so it isn’t only desert rock and Sierra granite. That roster is our eye on where people look, not a sort by published odds. The directory can sort by success rate for people who want the ledger; the homepage is allowed a point of view.
The photographs mattered more than the early sketches admitted. Cinematic bands with careful crops change whether a place feels like a rumor or a destination. We threw out soft candidates and kept frames that could hold a full-bleed row. It’s still a field guide — atmosphere, not a promise you’ll win.
Honesty took more ink than the chrome. Every published rate and hard date carries Official, Estimate, or Not confirmed yet — the definitions we argued into place so a draft percentage never gets to dress up as an agency cell. Apply buttons send you out. Privacy and Terms say what we won’t pretend: no support desk, no affiliation theater, bookmarks in your browser unless you share a link. Legal is usually where products go vague. We tried to stay specific even when the answer was “we don’t offer that.”
Wishlist — now My Bookmarks — stayed client-only on purpose. Option D: shareable link plus localStorage, no accounts, no sync fantasy for V1. Cost and trust in the same breath — if we don’t hold your shortlist, we can’t leak it. Second phone loses the list. We said that out loud and kept going.
Opening day also meant drawing the line from the brand note and not blinking. No bots. No proxy applying. No “we’ll improve your odds.” The hush on a hard morning is the drawing working — or the reservation window doing its job. Cancel tools assume you already chose. We opened assuming you were still choosing where, and whether.
September 18, 2026Hush Canyon — a first step, long in the makingThis one started long before it had a name. On family hikes as a kid, I was always the one out front — faster than my parents, already around the next bend. In 2012 I moved to California, and the mountains became a habit: all kinds of peaks, as often as I could get to them. Then came the national parks, and I fell for them completely.Read the whole entry
This one started long before it had a name. On family hikes as a kid, I was always the one out front — faster than my parents, already around the next bend. In 2012 I moved to California, and the mountains became a habit: all kinds of peaks, as often as I could get to them. Then came the national parks, and I fell for them completely.
The years have their say, and so do my knees. I still love to travel, but many of the hard places I once would have raced up are no longer ones I can take on. So the question changed. Not only can I get in — but should I try, and is this the right place for me now?
So I turned all of it toward the other things I love just as much: research, data, and technology. If I couldn’t be the first one up the trail anymore, I could be the one who reads the fine print — the lottery rules, the permit calendars, the agency pages nobody enjoys — and makes it clear for whoever comes next. That idea sat for a long time as a sentence beside the other Sunday Robbo ideas in First Wave: a hard-ticket guide that starts earlier than cancel alerts. Other ideas came and went. This one kept pulling us back, and every time we returned to it, we understood a little more of what it should be — and what it shouldn’t.
What it shouldn’t be was clear early. The category is full of nab / snag / scanner energy — tools that assume you’ve picked a park and a date, then sell you a way to watch inventory twitch. We kept circling the other starting point. You’re still choosing where. You’re still choosing whether the attempt is worth it.
September 18 was the day we stopped circling. The name locked as Hush Canyon. Invented place, real feeling — the quiet you get when a lottery or timed window keeps a trail from becoming a queue. It sounded like geography without stealing a real canyon. Clarity before you apply. That phrase survived every naming pass for a reason. Two days later came the first commit — small on its own, and the first real step of something we’d been carrying for a long time.
What we already knew: Recreation.gov and the agencies win on dates and fees; we summarize, label uncertainty, and send people out. No entering lotteries for anyone. No cancel scrape. What we didn’t know yet was how loud Most sought should be, whether a wishlist needed an account, or that “browse first, then let the holiday decide where to apply” would become the emotional center of V1 more than another filter. Those answers came after the name. Names are bets. This one still feels like the quiet we meant.

Trailhead

The record.

Milestones, ideas, and what we learned. Not every fix.

September 25, 2026Live at hushcanyon.com — no longer only oursToday the guide stopped being something we opened on our own laptops. hushcanyon.com points at it now — the domain we bought four days ago, finally doing its job. Anyone can type the name and land in the quiet. It sounds like a small technical step. It didn’t feel small. Five days after the first commit, the thing has an address.Read the whole entry
Today the guide stopped being something we opened on our own laptops. hushcanyon.com points at it now — the domain we bought four days ago, finally doing its job. Anyone can type the name and land in the quiet. It sounds like a small technical step. It didn’t feel small. Five days after the first commit, the thing has an address.
What went out the door: thirty-four places, up from the twenty-five we opened with. Each place page now says who it’s for and who should probably skip it, how much effort the day really asks, and — where we have it — when we last checked the facts. All places has a map beside the list. Guides launched with thirteen essays: how the agencies behind hard tickets actually work, what to do the minute a window opens, what to do after you win. Before you go holds the apply checklist and the rules of thumb we keep repeating to ourselves.
Just as important is what didn’t go out. We built partner cards — gear and insurance we’d actually recommend, with stories from our own trips and cons on every card. They’re finished, and they’re switched off. Product first, commission second: a guide this new doesn’t need shopping links yet, and we’d rather earn trust with the free part before anything on the page could earn us money. When the traffic is real, we’ll turn them on and say so here. The Ko-fi tip we added two days ago is resting too, for now — it comes back when the guide has earned the traffic.
What we want it to feel like: the same as it did on September 18, when this was one sentence beside the other ideas — clarity before you apply. No bots. No odds theater. The agency page still wins. The only difference is that now it isn’t ours alone. If you found this page, you’re one of the first. Hello.
September 23, 2026Tip the field guide — clarity, not odds
The guide stays free. Tip & Leave a Note lives in two quiet places: the footer (Title Case, beside Our Story and the legal links) and a short ask at the end of Our Story — Leave a tip. No cup sticker, no fundraising bar. The modal is our chrome only: wordmark, what a tip is for, then Leave a tip on Ko-fi (new tab). What it is not: better odds, bots, a support desk. Checkout runs on Ko-fi; the statement shows Sunday Robbo.
September 22, 2026Make a plan — holidays decide the order
The original bet was simple: browse the parks you can only reach by lottery or scarce permit — then use a real holiday to decide where to apply this year. My Bookmarks got the first half right and stranded the second. A shortlist does not know your trip is the second week of July. It does not care that Whitney’s lottery already closed while Cadillac is still months out. We kept bumping into the same gap: people don’t only need places; they need an order.
So today Make a plan shipped. You pick the hard tickets you actually care about, put trip dates on them, and we build a sequence of apply steps with a plain-English why. One primary step per place — not a wall of every gate — and backups stay as asides, not fake urgency. When you’re done reading, you leave and finish on Recreation.gov or the agency page. We still do not apply for you. That line was in the first brief and it hasn’t moved.
The product feeling drove the wiring. Bookmarks and plans are different jobs, so they don’t share a URL anymore. Share my plan is a link with places and dates — treat it like a public note. One plan lives in this browser; Restart clears it; the header quietly becomes My plan once you’ve built something. Import bookmarks is a merge, not a takeover. From a place page you can say Use in a plan without throwing away what you already had.
Same day we also tightened the quieter half of trust: hard dates only when an Official note already said them out loud, and the scheduled refresh that fetches Rec.gov twice a month when a window is due. Automation may write a clear range. It does not invent lottery weeks. If it’s unsure, we get an Issue instead of a confident lie on the page. That matches how we’ve talked about data from day one — JSON in the repo, honest labels, agency page wins.
What we want it to feel like: less a dashboard of scarcity, more you and a calendar deciding what to attempt this year. If the plan is wrong, Edit. If the trip changed, Restart. If a friend asks what you’re going for, Share. Small verbs. Real dates. Hard tickets first — then this year’s plan.
September 20, 2026The guide opens — hard tickets, still choosing
Hush Canyon went from brief to something you can browse. Twenty-five places in All places, scattered on purpose so the map isn’t one park system in a costume — we’d talked about spreading across the country in case a map view came later. Six sit on the homepage as Most sought: The Wave first, then Enchantments, Half Dome, Maroon Bells, Angels Landing, Whitney. Maroon Bells is there so it isn’t only desert rock and Sierra granite. That roster is our eye on where people look, not a sort by published odds. The directory can sort by success rate for people who want the ledger; the homepage is allowed a point of view.
The photographs mattered more than the early sketches admitted. Cinematic bands with careful crops change whether a place feels like a rumor or a destination. We threw out soft candidates and kept frames that could hold a full-bleed row. It’s still a field guide — atmosphere, not a promise you’ll win.
Honesty took more ink than the chrome. Every published rate and hard date carries Official, Estimate, or Not confirmed yet — the definitions we argued into place so a draft percentage never gets to dress up as an agency cell. Apply buttons send you out. Privacy and Terms say what we won’t pretend: no support desk, no affiliation theater, bookmarks in your browser unless you share a link. Legal is usually where products go vague. We tried to stay specific even when the answer was “we don’t offer that.”
Wishlist — now My Bookmarks — stayed client-only on purpose. Option D: shareable link plus localStorage, no accounts, no sync fantasy for V1. Cost and trust in the same breath — if we don’t hold your shortlist, we can’t leak it. Second phone loses the list. We said that out loud and kept going.
Opening day also meant drawing the line from the brand note and not blinking. No bots. No proxy applying. No “we’ll improve your odds.” The hush on a hard morning is the drawing working — or the reservation window doing its job. Cancel tools assume you already chose. We opened assuming you were still choosing where, and whether.
September 18, 2026Hush Canyon — a first step, long in the makingThis one started long before it had a name. On family hikes as a kid, I was always the one out front — faster than my parents, already around the next bend. In 2012 I moved to California, and the mountains became a habit: all kinds of peaks, as often as I could get to them. Then came the national parks, and I fell for them completely.Read the whole entry
This one started long before it had a name. On family hikes as a kid, I was always the one out front — faster than my parents, already around the next bend. In 2012 I moved to California, and the mountains became a habit: all kinds of peaks, as often as I could get to them. Then came the national parks, and I fell for them completely.
The years have their say, and so do my knees. I still love to travel, but many of the hard places I once would have raced up are no longer ones I can take on. So the question changed. Not only can I get in — but should I try, and is this the right place for me now?
So I turned all of it toward the other things I love just as much: research, data, and technology. If I couldn’t be the first one up the trail anymore, I could be the one who reads the fine print — the lottery rules, the permit calendars, the agency pages nobody enjoys — and makes it clear for whoever comes next. That idea sat for a long time as a sentence beside the other Sunday Robbo ideas in First Wave: a hard-ticket guide that starts earlier than cancel alerts. Other ideas came and went. This one kept pulling us back, and every time we returned to it, we understood a little more of what it should be — and what it shouldn’t.
What it shouldn’t be was clear early. The category is full of nab / snag / scanner energy — tools that assume you’ve picked a park and a date, then sell you a way to watch inventory twitch. We kept circling the other starting point. You’re still choosing where. You’re still choosing whether the attempt is worth it.
September 18 was the day we stopped circling. The name locked as Hush Canyon. Invented place, real feeling — the quiet you get when a lottery or timed window keeps a trail from becoming a queue. It sounded like geography without stealing a real canyon. Clarity before you apply. That phrase survived every naming pass for a reason. Two days later came the first commit — small on its own, and the first real step of something we’d been carrying for a long time.
What we already knew: Recreation.gov and the agencies win on dates and fees; we summarize, label uncertainty, and send people out. No entering lotteries for anyone. No cancel scrape. What we didn’t know yet was how loud Most sought should be, whether a wishlist needed an account, or that “browse first, then let the holiday decide where to apply” would become the emotional center of V1 more than another filter. Those answers came after the name. Names are bets. This one still feels like the quiet we meant.

Trailhead