Living in Los Angeles sort of sucks for obvious reasons, but at the same time you're only a few hour drive from everything. Las Vegas is about four to five hours, San Diego is two hours, and Santa Barbara is two hours. And in an hour and a half you can get to Mount Baldy which's peaks are almost 9,000 feet. When I went there with my wife we took the chair lifts up to the lodge and did some hiking. I lived at 9,000 feet in Colorado for a few years and I remember the high altitude being rough with people that use to come visit. But now when I've been living at sea level for the last 10 years, hiking at these high altitudes was brutal, especially caring camera equipment. But we had to do it. The clouds rolled in and we had to get up above them.