Expedition Planning · 2026-07-24 · 4 min read
Inside the Expedition Index
Forty-four adventures, one rule: every requirement had to be an honest floor a real operator would recognize. How we built the Index, and how to actually use it.
The Expedition Index started as a spreadsheet argument. We listed the world's great adventures — Kilimanjaro, the Mentawais, an Atlantic crossing, full-cave Yucatán — and tried to write down what each one honestly requires. Not what a brochure implies. Not what an influencer survived. What a good operator would want to see before taking your deposit.
Every entry got a requirement in Signature notation, and we fought about almost all of them. Everest Base Camp at MTN-4: too strict? Then we remembered the helicopter evacuation statistics and kept it. The Greek flotilla at MRN-3: too loose? Not with a lead boat watching your anchor set. The requirements landed where honesty landed, and where a guided version genuinely lowers the bar, the entry says so — guides are not training wheels, they're how several of these are done at all.
The Index reads your chart live. Green READY pins are trips you could book tomorrow; gold means one stage out; maroon means build toward it. The most useful filter is the one people click last: show me only what I'm ready for. The list is almost always longer than they expected. Readiness compounds quietly — a WFA course here, a season of overnights there, and suddenly a dozen pins have turned green without any single dramatic decision.
Use it backwards, too. Star the maroon expedition that scares you pleasantly, open its briefing, and let the planner turn the gap into a timeline. A dream with a course list attached is called a plan.