"I have some bad news," I yell below me to Wendy, who looks utterly drained as she trudges slowly to the top of the jagged ridge that I'm standing on. "We still have 1,500 vertical feet to go." We've already hiked up a total elevation gain of 2,600 feet today, and Wendy looks like I've just hit her in the head with a baseball bat. Rich appears on top of the ridge.
"What? What?!" he groans.
"But… I… we're almost out of water," Wendy moans. "And the sun is setting." She's right. My friends Rich and Wendy and I started our 32-mile, four-day, Death Valley backpacking trip by carrying only a two-day supply of water, expecting to find Cottonwood Springs, a reliable water source, by the end of our second day. But, after winding between the towering stone narrows of Marble Canyon, we noticed a four-mile side trip on our topo map, following a portion of Marble Canyon to the west. We decided to investigate. To our surprise, the extra four miles not only required us to climb over 1,600 feet up a steep scree slope but also provoked us to drink most of our remaining water supply. Now, it's the end of our second day, and our side trip hasn't brought us much closer to the water at Cottonwood Springs.
When we start hiking again after catching our breath, we're relieved that the hike mercifully drops us 300 feet before the next ascent, and it's in this valley where we decide to spend the night.
"I think we should eat tomorrow's cold lunch for dinner tonight," I suggest.
"I was thinking the same thing," Rich says reluctantly, knowing that we would have to use some of our precious remaining water to cook a real dinner. We eat our lunch-dinner quietly, with everyone in mild-panic mode. We're all mulling over the fact that, tomorrow morning, we'll have to (according to our guidebook) hike the alleged "crux" -- a steep climb over a mountain pass -- with almost no water remaining. When we finish eating, we retreat from the cold desert night into our sleeping bags, exhausted and irrationally thirsty. I feel like I've never been this thirsty in my life, though I suspect that I'm feeling a strange psychological reaction to our lack of water. I feel annoyed at my dumb brain, which seems to think that the best reaction to almost running out of water is to get extra thirsty. We all lie in our sleeping bags, silent, staring at the ceilings of our tents.
Hikers approach Cottonwood Springs in Death Valley.In the morning of our third day, we eat Clif Bars for breakfast (which don't require water) and begin our climb, up a narrow ravine, toward the top of a high ridge. To our relief, the gradual ascent is much easier than the steep ravines that we tackled on our side trip during the previous day. When we reach the top of the saddle, we're looking out over a sprawling, golden valley, flanked by rugged mountains. It feels like we're about to jump on horses and start roping cattle. We don't, but it's an easy, downhill hike, across the expanse, to Cottonwood Springs, where the Park Ranger told us that we'd find water.
The calming walk, through an obstacle course of desert blackbrush and flanking ridges funneling us toward the first spring, helps us relax. We've been hiking for almost three hours when we reach Cottonwood Springs, where we're astonished to find what looks almost like a deciduous forest relocated from the eastern US, plopped in the middle of Death Valley. We're feeling relieved, but we still don't see an obvious source of water. We begin infiltrating the Spring's dense vegetation, stomping through sticky mud and algae-filled puddles, searching urgently for Cottonwood Creek. It takes us almost a half hour to move a quarter-mile into the spring through the thick foliage. Just as a cloud of discouragement begins to smother us, I hear a sound.
"Do you hear that?!" I yell back to Wendy and Rich behind me. "I'm pretty sure I hear running water!" But, when I stop moving for a moment, I'm unsure of whether I'm hearing the sound of water or just wind blowing through the trees' leaves. I try to take a drink from my Camelbak, but the reservoir is completely empty.
Frustrated, I push through another perimeter of trees, and I find myself standing in a clearing. Suddenly, the sparkle of the sun reflecting off a vibrant creek less than 20 feet away catches my eye. It's such a strange thing to see in the middle of a desert that I suspect, for a moment, that I'm seeing a mirage.
But, when Wendy and Rich join me, and we approach the water, it's obvious that it's real. We cheer. Wendy and I immediately begin filtering the water into our Camelbaks while Rich starts cooking the dinner that we wished we had eaten the night before.
We're proud of ourselves. We've found water in the middle of a desert.
