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Cottonwood-Marble Canyon Loop Day 2
Camp 1 in Cottonwood Canyon to Camp 2 in Dead Horse Canyon 9.5 mi :: 7 hr :: 2130 ft Today we will switch canyons, and the navigation is uncertain. We have a sheet with vague directions like “find the unmarked pass” where there must be several unmarked passes. We will also have to find…
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Cottonwood-Marble Canyon Loop Day 1
Cottonwood-Marble Canyon confluence to Camp 1 in Cottonwood Canyon 8.7 mi :: 4 hr :: 1830 ft We get a reasonably early start, which is a good thing, because there’s a little more to getting to Cottonwood Canyon than just driving to Death Valley. A park pass and backcountry permit are required, which we got…
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Ann goes to Darwin Falls
Ann and Jezze do this day hike near Death Valley and take pictures for me. She notes that the falls are the sole water source for Panamint Springs. It consists of a pipe in the mud with a few refridgerator shelves acting as a prefilter. We wonder if the Panamint Springs are the source of…
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Ann goes to Trona Pinnacles
She said, “They kind of go with Trona. They’re neat, but sort of inelegant and dumpy.”
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CDT Itinerary
Trying to guess where and when we will be someplace on a hike this long is surprisingly complicated! We’ve started with a spreadsheet that estimates our progress at an average of 15 miles per day. I went a little nuts with the actual spreadsheet, which now has about a thousand columns with indecipherable formulas. This…
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Short Canyon
The sky is clear and blue today. We get out for a short hike in Short Canyon, a pretty spot we haven’t been to for a while. This is also where Ann developed her affinity for Joshua Trees – they grow in big healthy copses here. Since it will probably be our last hike here…
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Movie: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
I didn’t really want to like this movie, and I didn’t, but I’ll admit to squeezing some enjoyment out of it. Put little effort into it, ignore the cliches and “say wow now” effects, add a few glasses of wine, settle in on the couch with someone lovable, and it can be done. Don’t expect…
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New Directions
The weather in the morning looks gloomy and discouraging. We get ready to climb slowly, with no enthusiasm, and head for the dark cloudy mountains. In Inyokern we nearly turn around, but decide to go to Kernville even if it’s just for lunch. It turns out to be much nicer at New Directions, where a…
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Movie: Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
A movie relic of the eighties, composed of film-noir relics of the forties that are in turn inspired by detective novel relics of the twenties. Probably in the sixties they figured the genre was over with at last and maybe everyone would drop out and forget about it. But there’s just too much there to…
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Gear: Sierra Designs Meteor Light Tent
Ann had this tent on our first outing together in the Canyonlands in 2000. It was great, but the zipper was starting to go from Jezze laying on it all the time. A couple weeks ago Ann finally sent it to Sierra Designs for repair, indicating that she was willing to pay a reasonable fee…