What limits me is the lack of solid matter to push against, not lack of strength in my muscles.

Gpt says that would require about 275 million steps on a magic rigid weightless stairway. Roughly 4.1 million calories. So at Phelps level energy expenditures you are still talking over a year of climbing every day.

GPT not so good at elementary physics evidently.

Assuming you don't have to carry your food... 4.1 million calories would be around 0.5 tons of olive oil.

Well, 100kg raised 10000m is only about 2350 food calories, from a purely physics perspective.

You'd need to go to about 47km for the end of the stairs to reach escape velocity I think? Past geo. Was using 20% efficiency. Still something off there.

ok, but what do you say?

You are not hiking much in the mountains, are you? 1000m of elevation gain per day are no problem for a slightly out of shape sit-all-day programmer. Not sure how high up you want me to go, but given a high enough mountain (and a thick jacket and supplemental oxygen) and most people here can do that in a few weeks or months.

That doesn't really escape the gravity well, does it?

It would if there was a mountain that kept going up, and you had oxygen to breathe.

Now if it were a magnet..