Susanne's Adventure Journal

Cottonwood-Marble Canyon Loop. Day 1: Red, Day 2: Blue. Last night was incredibly cold. I can say for sure that is was the coldest night I have ever camped, considering I have never had my water freeze before. And my water was inside my tent! Getting the tent down proved to be quite a challenge. I had only brought a pair of fleece gloves with me for warmth and my bottle of electrolyte drink had spilled on them the night before so now they were useless.  I only had my fingerless sun gloves for protection. Knowing that the “tricky part” of the hike was ahead of me today, I wanted to get as early of a start as possible. However, I either accidentally turned my phone off in the dark or the cold was messing with the battery, because, when I woke up, it was past my alarm time and my phone wasn't working. I still managed to wake up and start breaking down camp before the sun broke over the pass I needed to head to. The inside of my tent's rain fly was completely coate...

Cottonwood-Marble Canyon Loop.  Red: Day 1, Blue: Day 2 Today was the first day of my second attempt to backpack the Cottonwood-Marble Canyon Loop in Death Valley National Park.  On my first attempt about 1.5 weeks ago, I took a “detour” into a side canyon, and then, at the end of Cottonwood Canyon, I got stuck trying get through the vegetation around Cottonwood Spring. I first tried to skirt around the vegetation along the highly sloped canyon walls, and then tried bushwhacking my way through it. I did not make it out of the canyon that first day. Since I had only given myself 2 days to complete the trip, and hadn’t even made it to what was advertised as the “difficult” part of the route, I decided to backtrack through Cottonwood Canyon on day 2 and go home. The struggle is real.  This was from my first attempt at this hike.  I could not make it through the thick cottonwood growth at the end of the canyon. Now that I have scheduled 3 days for backpacking,...