Baby’s first bikepacking trip and first time visiting Death Valley National Park. 👶 Emily put together what was supposed to be a beginner friendly route. Narrator: it was not. To be fair, the distances are beginner friendly and it was the terrain (that Emily wasn't familiar with) that made the route very challenging. It was more type 2 fun. But a big, BIG, shout out to Emily Bei Cheng for organizing and for lending me gear so I could do this trip at all. Thank you!❤️ And to Daylen Yang 📸 for sharing his tent so I didn’t 🥶. And another big shout out to BelMont Bikes for helping with a last minute fix. It was my bad in not getting my seat pack setup earlier. When I first looked at it, it seemed simple enough. What I didn't realize was the collar for the bottom cradle was a solid piece of aluminum and the only way to put it on was to take the seat post off. When I did that, I messed up my dropper post and was basically unable to put the post back in. They fixed it super quick and crisis was averted. Our first day consisted of logistics - a water drop and getting camping permits. Irene and I ended up doing the water drop while Emily got the permits. Everything ended up taking longer than we hoped and we started behind schedule. We changed our plans and started further along the route and went to Twenty Mule Team Canyon to catch golden hour. It took a while to get the bikes setup and I’ve never ridden a bike so heavily loaded before. I wasn’t sure what to set my tire pressures to. With my normal pressures it felt cushy in a way they’ve never felt before. Clearly they need more weight to really shine. To be safe I added 5 extra PSI, which I think ended up being the right call. It still felt cushy but I think it prevented bottom outs. Getting used to the frame bag took a little while. The scenery at Twenty Mule team Canyon was breathtaking. After some photo pacing, we headed to our campsite in Echo Canyon. Right away, the gravel was way chunkier than I was expecting. I was so focused on the chunk, I didn’t even realize we were climbing. We made it to camp (campsite E7) just after sunset, an upcoming theme for this trip. Fortunately, it was still warm after we got everything setup. The site itself was in a S bend in the canyon and pretty but quite rocky like the road we rode up. The forecast for the whole weekend was supposed to be perfect but overnight it got very unexpectedly windy.