About this permit
Death Valley protects over 3,190,400 acres of designated wilderness, roughly 93% of the park, and you can camp in almost all of it without asking anyone. The Cottonwood-Marble Canyon loop is the exception. The National Park Service calls it the most popular backpacking route in the park and requires a wilderness permit year round for every overnight trip on it.
The loop runs 26 to 28 miles with 3,882 feet of gain and takes two to three nights. There are no signs and no maintained trail, so you are following wash bottoms and reading the canyon. Permits open six months ahead of your start date and same day permits stay available online until 11:59pm on the day you leave.
The route
Most people park where Cottonwood Canyon Road meets Marble Canyon Road and walk the loop clockwise, up Cottonwood and down Marble. Cottonwood Canyon Road runs 8.5 miles of deep sand and rocky wash before the canyon narrows and the springs start showing up. Cottonwood Springs is the most reliable of the three seasonal sources and the usual first camp.
From the springs the route climbs over a divide and drops into Deadhorse Canyon, where a vertical 8 foot dryfall has to be downclimbed. Deadhorse is the first source to dry up, so nobody should plan on filling there.
Marble Canyon closes down into the narrows that give the route its reputation. An enormous chokestone blocks the passage between the middle and lower narrows, and getting past it means backtracking to an alternate trail rather than forcing it. Marble Canyon Road runs the last 1.8 miles back to the cars.
Why it matters
Death Valley protects over 3.1 million acres of designated wilderness, and almost none of it needs a permit. This loop does, because it is the route people actually walk. It is also the rare Death Valley trip with water, which is why it fills the shoulder seasons while the rest of the park's backcountry stays empty.
The feeling
The first eight miles are sand and gravel road walking with the Cottonwood Mountains getting slowly larger. Then the canyon closes in, the walls go from tan to polished grey, and the sound of your own footsteps comes back at you off rock that has been dry for a thousand years. Cottonwood Springs arrives as an actual surprise: cottonwoods, running water, birds, in the middle of the driest place in North America.
