Havasu Falls Trip - Prelude and Day One
So I have talked about the gear I took to Havasu Falls, and I talked about what Adam and I did after we left Havasu Falls, but aside from the comments I posted on these photos, I haven't really summarized the actual trip into the falls very much. Let's do that now.
I arrived in Las Vegas on Monday night. On Tuesday Adam & I bought up supplies and packed, and then drove south into Arizona. We stay at the Grand Canyon Caverns hotel, which is right on Route 66. Due to our late arrival, we didn't do much there besides have dinner and look at the some of the tacky roadside decorations. The caverns themselves and other attractions will have to wait for another trip.
On Wednesday morning, we rose early and drove the nearly sixty miles to the Havasupai Trail trailhead. To be clear, the road turns north off of Route 66 and goes straight north to the edge of the Grand Canyon. There is nothing else out there; on those sixty miles there are maybe two turn offs for ranches, and nothing else. We saw a herd of elk and a small handful of cars going in the same direction as us.
The sun was rising as we parked at 7am. By this time many people had already started the hike down into the canyon. They either rose earlier than us or camped in their cars out at the trailhead. In July that probably makes sense, because the light arrives earlier and the heat arrives shortly after it. In October, Adam and I calculated that temperature wouldn't be high enough to justify the lack of sleep. Thankfully, we were proven correct.
As an aside, the trailhead, and indeed our entire trip was on the Havasupai Indian Reservation, and we never actually entered Grand Canyon National Park or even came particularly close to it.
From the parking lot, it is an eight mile hike down to Supai, Arizona. The first mile of that hike is a steep set of switchbacks as you climb down the canyon wall. Fortunately, this branch of the canyon is much shallower than it is on the trail to Phantom Ranch, and the switchbacks are wide and well maintained to allow the mule trains that supply Supai to navigate it easily without hikers having to dive for cover. Once you reach the bottom of the switchbacks, the remaining seven miles mostly follow a dry river bed. The trail gradually descends, but it's pretty subtle. We passed many people hiking out of the canyon, and quite a few small mule trains heading out.
This part of the canyon is narrow throughout and comparatively not very high, but there are still plenty of pretty rock walls to look at on the way. More importantly, the walls provided plenty of shade. I suspect in July the heat would be brutal. As with any such desert canyon, there is a risk of flash floods, particularly during the monsoon season in July and August. For our hike it was dry as a bone and the sky was crystal clear, so we didn't have this concern.
After eight miles, we reached Supai. Here we had to check in to get the wristband that indicated we had a permit. No day hiking is allowed on this trail; either you have a permit that allows overnight stays or you don't go. Besides that, we don't do much in town. There's a small restaurant and a lodge for those who don't want to camp and luck out and get a reservation. Once we left the town, we didn't return until we were leaving. I do regret not mailing a postcard from the post office. It's the only post office in America where mules carry the mail out, and has a special postmark because of that.
It's another two miles from town to the campsite, mostly downhill. By this point my pack was feeling pretty heavy, but I was energized by passing Havasu Falls near the end of it. We picked out a campsite, set up our tent, had some lunch (it was after 1pm) and rested a bit.
We then returned to Havasu Falls to take some pictures. Adam went wading. A number of the "what to know about Havasu" websites had talked about "bringing a pool floaty for photos" and sure enough some kid brought a giant inflatable turtle, which he was paddling around on. For extra hilarity, it got away from him and almost escaped before somebody retrieved it.
At this point, we backtracked to see the other waterfalls we'd passed, which were not really visible from the trail to the campsite.
That water that falls over these falls is the Havasu Creek, which is a little bit runoff and quite a bit from a spring that has a constant temperature of 70 degrees. The water carries a lot of calcium carbonate, which gives the water an otherworldly blue green color. The high mineral content makes the water feel a bit slippery.
Flood regularly change the course of the creek. Because of a 2008 flood, the Navajo Falls that used to be the first of the major waterfalls actually went dry and was rerouted over two downstream falls, which are cleverly called Upper and Lower Navajo Falls. We were able to walk up close to both of the waterfalls. The Upper Falls is quite broad, and ends in a shallow pool surrounded by reeds. The Lower Falls has a number of pools above it, and falls into a narrow canyon which is the only part of the creek that cannot be easily reached on foot.
I feel I have to note here that there was a lot of erosion on the trails to the these falls. It was unclear how much of that erosion was due to flooding and how much to people. We definitely saw trail crews at some points and a few areas were roped off, but it was pretty clear that for these upper falls people were more or less making their own trails. The permits are limited to 300 per night, but it sure seemed to me that the trails would be stabler if that number was reduced, or at least if the existing trails were marked more clearly and better maintained. Since tourism is the primary source of income for the Havasupai. I'm sure they argue about that number quite a bit.
More concerning to me was that there was a lot of litter, both on the trails near these two falls and in the campsites a whole. All trash has to be packed out (the Tribe burns their own trash), and it was quite clear that many people didn't do a great job of it. I personally policed our campsite because the litter was just embarrassing. Many of the other hikers seemed less like typical backpackers or hikers, and more like tourists who really wanted photos for their instagram accounts.
On the plus side, the campsite had four different composting toilets at various points throughout the site, which everybody seemed to be using instead of watering trees. Everybody was observing the permanent campfire ban. Other than that the only amenities were some picnic tables, and a couple of tents where tribal members sold fry bread and other cold drinks.
After some quality waterfall viewing, we returned to camp. At this point we'd hiked about about 12 miles on the day with plenty of altitude change. I was happy to slip on my hiking sandals and rest. We made friends with Brenna and Anita in the campsite next to ours. By coincidence, they were actually in the same permit group as us. Adam's friend had bought 20 permits and organized friends and friends of friends to go, but then she has to bail out herself. I only knew Adam, and Adam didn't know any of the other people, but we got along with Brenna and Anita very well and hung out with them the rest of the trip. The two of them were from the Los Angeles area (Santa Monica and Orange County) where they'd previously worked together. They had slept in their cars and hiked down very early in the morning by the light of their headlamps, and they confirmed that we'd made the correct choice by sleeping in.
We ate some dinner. In lieu of a stove we'd brought some "self heating" backpacking meals, which ended up working extremely well. They got hot enough that after we ate Anita borrowed one to keep her hands warm. In October with the sun down, the canyon cools off quickly. I was glad of my sweatshirt. We stayed up late enough to look at stars. There was enough moonlight to drown out some, but otherwise it was the most pristine sky I've outside of the Boundary Waters. The sight of the moonlight on the canyon walls with the stars overhead was incredibly beautiful, and well worth staying up for, but as typically happens when you're camping in the of nowhere, with the sun down, we went to bed.
I arrived in Las Vegas on Monday night. On Tuesday Adam & I bought up supplies and packed, and then drove south into Arizona. We stay at the Grand Canyon Caverns hotel, which is right on Route 66. Due to our late arrival, we didn't do much there besides have dinner and look at the some of the tacky roadside decorations. The caverns themselves and other attractions will have to wait for another trip.
On Wednesday morning, we rose early and drove the nearly sixty miles to the Havasupai Trail trailhead. To be clear, the road turns north off of Route 66 and goes straight north to the edge of the Grand Canyon. There is nothing else out there; on those sixty miles there are maybe two turn offs for ranches, and nothing else. We saw a herd of elk and a small handful of cars going in the same direction as us.
The sun was rising as we parked at 7am. By this time many people had already started the hike down into the canyon. They either rose earlier than us or camped in their cars out at the trailhead. In July that probably makes sense, because the light arrives earlier and the heat arrives shortly after it. In October, Adam and I calculated that temperature wouldn't be high enough to justify the lack of sleep. Thankfully, we were proven correct.
As an aside, the trailhead, and indeed our entire trip was on the Havasupai Indian Reservation, and we never actually entered Grand Canyon National Park or even came particularly close to it.
From the parking lot, it is an eight mile hike down to Supai, Arizona. The first mile of that hike is a steep set of switchbacks as you climb down the canyon wall. Fortunately, this branch of the canyon is much shallower than it is on the trail to Phantom Ranch, and the switchbacks are wide and well maintained to allow the mule trains that supply Supai to navigate it easily without hikers having to dive for cover. Once you reach the bottom of the switchbacks, the remaining seven miles mostly follow a dry river bed. The trail gradually descends, but it's pretty subtle. We passed many people hiking out of the canyon, and quite a few small mule trains heading out.
This part of the canyon is narrow throughout and comparatively not very high, but there are still plenty of pretty rock walls to look at on the way. More importantly, the walls provided plenty of shade. I suspect in July the heat would be brutal. As with any such desert canyon, there is a risk of flash floods, particularly during the monsoon season in July and August. For our hike it was dry as a bone and the sky was crystal clear, so we didn't have this concern.
After eight miles, we reached Supai. Here we had to check in to get the wristband that indicated we had a permit. No day hiking is allowed on this trail; either you have a permit that allows overnight stays or you don't go. Besides that, we don't do much in town. There's a small restaurant and a lodge for those who don't want to camp and luck out and get a reservation. Once we left the town, we didn't return until we were leaving. I do regret not mailing a postcard from the post office. It's the only post office in America where mules carry the mail out, and has a special postmark because of that.
It's another two miles from town to the campsite, mostly downhill. By this point my pack was feeling pretty heavy, but I was energized by passing Havasu Falls near the end of it. We picked out a campsite, set up our tent, had some lunch (it was after 1pm) and rested a bit.
We then returned to Havasu Falls to take some pictures. Adam went wading. A number of the "what to know about Havasu" websites had talked about "bringing a pool floaty for photos" and sure enough some kid brought a giant inflatable turtle, which he was paddling around on. For extra hilarity, it got away from him and almost escaped before somebody retrieved it.
At this point, we backtracked to see the other waterfalls we'd passed, which were not really visible from the trail to the campsite.
That water that falls over these falls is the Havasu Creek, which is a little bit runoff and quite a bit from a spring that has a constant temperature of 70 degrees. The water carries a lot of calcium carbonate, which gives the water an otherworldly blue green color. The high mineral content makes the water feel a bit slippery.
Flood regularly change the course of the creek. Because of a 2008 flood, the Navajo Falls that used to be the first of the major waterfalls actually went dry and was rerouted over two downstream falls, which are cleverly called Upper and Lower Navajo Falls. We were able to walk up close to both of the waterfalls. The Upper Falls is quite broad, and ends in a shallow pool surrounded by reeds. The Lower Falls has a number of pools above it, and falls into a narrow canyon which is the only part of the creek that cannot be easily reached on foot.
I feel I have to note here that there was a lot of erosion on the trails to the these falls. It was unclear how much of that erosion was due to flooding and how much to people. We definitely saw trail crews at some points and a few areas were roped off, but it was pretty clear that for these upper falls people were more or less making their own trails. The permits are limited to 300 per night, but it sure seemed to me that the trails would be stabler if that number was reduced, or at least if the existing trails were marked more clearly and better maintained. Since tourism is the primary source of income for the Havasupai. I'm sure they argue about that number quite a bit.
More concerning to me was that there was a lot of litter, both on the trails near these two falls and in the campsites a whole. All trash has to be packed out (the Tribe burns their own trash), and it was quite clear that many people didn't do a great job of it. I personally policed our campsite because the litter was just embarrassing. Many of the other hikers seemed less like typical backpackers or hikers, and more like tourists who really wanted photos for their instagram accounts.
On the plus side, the campsite had four different composting toilets at various points throughout the site, which everybody seemed to be using instead of watering trees. Everybody was observing the permanent campfire ban. Other than that the only amenities were some picnic tables, and a couple of tents where tribal members sold fry bread and other cold drinks.
After some quality waterfall viewing, we returned to camp. At this point we'd hiked about about 12 miles on the day with plenty of altitude change. I was happy to slip on my hiking sandals and rest. We made friends with Brenna and Anita in the campsite next to ours. By coincidence, they were actually in the same permit group as us. Adam's friend had bought 20 permits and organized friends and friends of friends to go, but then she has to bail out herself. I only knew Adam, and Adam didn't know any of the other people, but we got along with Brenna and Anita very well and hung out with them the rest of the trip. The two of them were from the Los Angeles area (Santa Monica and Orange County) where they'd previously worked together. They had slept in their cars and hiked down very early in the morning by the light of their headlamps, and they confirmed that we'd made the correct choice by sleeping in.
We ate some dinner. In lieu of a stove we'd brought some "self heating" backpacking meals, which ended up working extremely well. They got hot enough that after we ate Anita borrowed one to keep her hands warm. In October with the sun down, the canyon cools off quickly. I was glad of my sweatshirt. We stayed up late enough to look at stars. There was enough moonlight to drown out some, but otherwise it was the most pristine sky I've outside of the Boundary Waters. The sight of the moonlight on the canyon walls with the stars overhead was incredibly beautiful, and well worth staying up for, but as typically happens when you're camping in the of nowhere, with the sun down, we went to bed.