Havasupai - Part 1

I got home from my Havasupai trip, today, which has been a long time in coming. Havasupai is a Native American reservation in Arizona that contains a swimming hole oasis in the middle of the desert. It is home to the Havasupai tribe and is located in Havasu Canyon, an offshoot of the Grand Canyon. The swimming holes are found along Havasu Creek, which plunges over six major waterfalls (including the iconic Havasu Falls) before flowing into the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon proper. The main allure of Havasupai is the beauty of the turquoise-colored water and lush green vegetation juxtaposed with the rusty backdrop of a rugged desert canyon. The water is blue because it contains dissolved lime and calcium carbonate, which precipitate on everything in the water, creating exquisite travertine rims on the cascades in the creek, and creating travertine cliffs that look like massive rust-colored drip castles in the waterfall spray zones.

I can’t remember when I first heard about Havasupai, but I think it was in the early-to-mid 2000’s, back before the days of #bucketlist hashtags and social media virality. I believe I first discovered it by seeing a postcard of Havasu Falls, or an early-2000’s quality jpeg of a postcard of Havasu Falls on the internet. Getting there requires an eight-mile backpacking trek down into the canyon to the village of Supai (only accessible by foot, horseback, or helicopter), which features a lodge, café, and general store. You can either stay at the Havasupai Lodge in town, or continue another 2-3 miles and camp at the campground just downstream of Havasu Falls. This seemed far too intimidating to my younger self, so I never seriously entertained the idea of actually going. Nevertheless, I often had dreams (in the literal sense) about going there, or going to similar desert swimming holes.

( Click here to read the saga of how I booked this trip )

On Monday, September 25, Cade and I flew into Las Vegas. The signage coming out of the terminal pointed to “baggage claim” in one direction and “liquor store” in the other. From the airport, we rented a car and drove to Arizona. Along the way, we stopped in Kingman, AZ, the last major town before our destination. We ate at Cracker Barrel, which seemed a bit out of place out west (Cracker Barrel has always had a distinctly southeastern feel, to me). We then went to Wal-Mart and picked up some last-minute groceries, including jerky, bread, and peanut butter packets. From Kingman, we got onto Route 66 and drove through Peach Springs, AZ, the closest “town” to the Havasupai Trailhead. Peach Springs basically consisted of a motel, the Hualapai (pronounced “hu-walla-pee”) Lodge, and a gas station with a convenience store. Our motel, the Grand Canyon Caverns Inn, was about fifteen minutes past Peach Springs. We had considered the Hualapai Lodge, as it seemed to be the nicer of the two motels, but it has a railroad right behind it with frequent train traffic, and I know from experience that a motel room is worthless if you can’t actually sleep in it. The Grand Canyon Caverns Inn looked (okay, was) old and tacky (it has 50’s cars and plastic dinosaurs out front), but it was clean and semi-comfortable with no train noise, which was all we needed for a single night’s stay. It got cold after the sun went down, and the woman at the front desk said they had been having a bit of a cold snap, so she upgraded our initial reservation for a room with two double beds to a room with two queens, as those rooms had heaters.
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Day 1:

We woke up early on Tuesday morning, and the temperature was in the 40’s. We were dissatisfied with the continental breakfast options at our motel, which basically consisted of bread and fruit, so we decided to drive back to the Diamond Creek Café, which is inside the Hualapai Lodge, to get a hot breakfast. As we were walking out of the lobby at the Grand Canyon Caverns Inn, a biker approached us and asked if we were going to Havasupai. We said yes, and he asked if we had a reservation. I said we had made our reservation over a year ago. He said he didn’t have one, but he was going to try his luck getting there. He said he would offer them $200 to let him day-hike in if they tried to stop him. We had seen him talking to another group before he started talking to us, and I got the impression that he might be trying to befriend people who were going there so he could ask to piggy-back onto their reservations if he encountered them later in the day. He didn’t know that we had planned to get breakfast first, and I believe he was following us, as he followed us past the turnoff to Indian Road 18 (the road to Hualapai Hilltop: the location of the Havasupai Trailhead) and then turned around and went back.

We heard a train pass by as we were eating breakfast at the Diamond Creek Café, and it was pretty loud, so we were glad we had stayed at the other motel. I swiped a couple of jelly packets to go with the bread and peanut butter we had bought yesterday, and we topped off our gas tank and hit the road.

( Click here for the full Day 1 trip report with pictures and videos )

We headed back to the lodge and took hot showers before collapsing from exhaustion. The hike to the village had been about eight miles, plus the two-mile round trip to Havasu Falls with side trail exploration, so we had probably hiked about 13 miles total. I now had tender, un-popped blisters on both my heels, and the top layer of skin on my left pinky toe had been rubbed off, so I patched these areas with moleskin and band-aids before going to bed. When I tossed and turned during the night (the beds were less than comfortable), it hurt whenever my heel blisters got pressed on. I woke up between 3 and 4 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep, since my body was still operating on Eastern Time, and Supai was essentially on Pacific Time (technically Mountain Time with no daylight savings time).

Day 2 of the trip is covered in my next entry.

Havasupai - Part 2

This is the second of three entries about my four-day stay in Havasupai. I covered Day 1 of the trip in my first entry.

Day 2:

Our objective for Wednesday (September 27) was to hike to Beaver Falls, which is about 5-6 miles from the village. When I had booked two full days in the canyon, my intention was for one day to be a swim day, and for the other day to be the Beaver Falls hike. Since Wednesday was cool and overcast, and Thursday was supposed to be warm and sunny, I thought it would make more sense to do Beaver Falls on Wednesday and spend Thursday hanging out at swimming holes. Cade thought we should wait until Thursday to do the longer hike, since we had done so much hiking yesterday, but I didn’t want to do this hike the day before we had to hike out of Supai. My blisters were a little less intense than last night, but they were still kind of sore. I was not going to let blisters slow me down, so I was hoping they would become desensitized the more I walked on them. We got breakfast at the café, and then we headed north down the trail. On the way out of town, I stopped to take a picture of the Wigleeva, a pair of pillars that stand above the village.

( Click here for the full Day 2 trip report with pictures and videos )

We got back to the lodge after dark, around 7 PM (Arizona is not on daylight savings time, so this would be 8 PM in other parts of the Mountain Time Zone). We were pretty exhausted by the time we reached the home stretch of the hike, so I was relieved to finally see the dark silhouettes of the Wigleeva as we neared the village. The café was closed, so we ate some of the food we had bought at Wal-Mart on Monday. I had two PBJ’s and some beef jerky. Cade had been jonesing for some meat and was less than satisfied by this meal, but I came mentally prepared to make at least one meal out of PBJ’s. Further adding to our first-world problems, our shower was out of hot water, so we had to take cold showers. My blisters were still unpopped and had gone down somewhat, and they were basically numb to pain after today’s hike. The Vibrams probably helped with that, since I wore them for most of the hike, but the foot support was terrible, so my calves and foot arches were pretty tight. I figured my legs and feet would get somewhat of a chance to recover tomorrow, as we were planning to do less hiking and more swimming.

The rest of the trip is covered in my third and final entry.

Havasupai - Part 3

This is the final entry about my trip to Havasupai. Day 1 and Day 2 are covered in my two previous entries.

Day 3:

On Thursday, the forecast was 79 °F and sunny. I was sort of anxious on this morning, because for me, today was going to make the difference between whether this trip was awesome or just okay. We had not gotten any satisfactory swim time due to arriving after peak sunlight on Tuesday, and the weather being cool and cloudy on Wednesday. When I go to a swimming hole, I don't just want to look at it, I want to get all up in it (and not be miserable). When I had planned the trip, I wanted two full days in the canyon so I could re-visit things that warranted further exploration on the second full day. I had initially thought we would end up swimming at Havasu Falls and the three upstream waterfalls, as they were all shaded and uninviting by the time we arrived on Tuesday. However, after yesterday’s hike, I had added picnicking at the water picnic table below Mooney Falls to my to-do list. Cade didn’t express any particular preferences as to what we should do, so I opted to start at Mooney Falls first and work our way back upstream. I had a headache when I woke up, and eating breakfast and drinking caffeine didn’t help, so I took some Advil and lay down in my bed back at the lodge until about 9:30 AM. Cade had no complaints about this, as it was still pretty cool outside when we got back from breakfast, and he hates being cold. Plus, we weren’t going far today (at this point, three miles was “not far”), so we didn’t need a super early start. We expected it to still be cool when we left the lodge, but as soon as the sun rose above the canyon wall, it got warm almost instantly. We had learned from the previous two days that sun-time at the swimming holes is pretty limited due to the high canyon walls, so we were going to try to adhere to somewhat of a schedule so that we could visit all of the pools during optimal sunlight. We had observed on Tuesday that Havasu Falls loses sun before 2:30 PM, Hidden Falls loses sun around 3 PM, and Rock Falls loses sun just before 4 PM. I wasn’t really sure when Upper Navajo Falls lost sun, but I didn’t really care, since the swimming hole situation there looked less than satisfactory.

( Click here for the full Day 3-4 trip report with pictures and videos )

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So, reflections. I was a little disappointed with the weather on the first half of the trip, but it was not enough to ruin the experience for me. I would much rather have had so/so weather and blue water than have it be warm with muddy water. The overcast weather on Wednesday did have the silver lining (so to speak) of allowing us to get some good waterfall pictures, which is difficult in the harsh contrast of light and shadow when the sun is out. I kind of wished we had gone in late May as initially planned, although I think high 70’s/low 80’s are typical for late September, so the weather we experienced was probably due more to an anomaly than the time of year we visited. However, most of the falls face north, so we probably would have gotten more sun time in late spring/early summer near the summer solstice. From a visual standpoint, I guess Havasupai was everything I hoped it would be, although I have seen so many pictures and videos of everything there that nothing was really surprising. Before the trip, I was slightly concerned that Havasupai was going to be so amazing that all other swimming holes would pale in comparison, and that I would be so “spoiled” by it that I would not be able to be impressed by any other swimming hole. In hindsight, I doubt that will be the case. While I’m not sure anything could ever be as epically gorgeous as the juxtaposition of the turquoise water and lush greenery against the red-orange canyon backdrop and exquisite travertine cliffs, the main appeal of the swimming holes themselves is the way they look. In terms of functionality, most of the pools I checked out are fairly shallow and not really suitable for jumping, and the high canyon walls block the sunlight for most of the day. Hidden Falls and Beaver Falls had deep swimming holes, but Hidden Falls and lower Beaver Falls had fairly strong currents. In my opinion, the best swimming area we checked out was the upper portion of Beaver Falls, which was basically a water playground with plenty of things to climb and explore. I regret that I didn’t get to spend more time there. If I ever come back, I would devote more time to Beaver Falls, and exploring the cascades and pools just upstream, as it looked like there were some good ones. We had also entertained the idea of hiking all the way to the Colorado River, which is 3-4 miles downstream of Beaver Falls, but we decided against that after the energy required just to make a round trip hike to Beaver Falls. However, I might try it in the future if I were staying at the campground, which is 2-3 miles closer to the river than the lodge. I’m not sure a return trip is high on my to-do list for the near future, as I have "seen it" at this point, but I would be up for going back as part of a larger group. The camping groups who were there mostly kept to themselves, but it seemed like a great setting to meet new friends and connect with people who share similar outdoor interests, sort of like an epic version of summer camp. I’ll admit that when I saw camping groups hanging out and getting to know each other, I kind of wanted to get in on that, being an extrovert and all.

I was expecting the area to be crawling with tourists, but it seemed like the place was well below full capacity (granted, this was during the week and at a less desirable time of the year). My guidebook (Exploring Havasupai: A Guide to the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Greg Witt) said that the crowds thin out after Labor Day, but that book was written before social media was quite as pervasive as it is today, so I was expecting the lodge and campground to both be booked solid at all times during non-winter. We also noticed that while there were people of all ages there, the majority of the tourists seemed to be middle-aged and/or international.

It’s difficult to reflect on the quality of this trip based purely on the swimming holes. Unlike your average swimming hole trek, this was a multi-day adventure in a remote canyon on a Native American reservation, which in some ways was like being in a neighboring country that has some but not total cultural overlap with your own. After reading other people’s trip reports about the non-existence of customer service and the tribal members being rude and unwelcoming toward tourists, I was worried (albeit somewhat mentally prepared) that I might be viewed as intrusive while I was there. However, I didn’t perceive any hostility or resentment from the tribal members. They seemed more or less indifferent toward tourists, like they were just doing their thing, and there happened to be tourists passing through town. I’m thinking many of the people who make them out to be rude or hostile are entitled pricks or people who are accustomed to “southern hospitality”, where not acting enthusiastic to be making pointless smalltalk about the weather is viewed as rude or anti-social. Many of the locals would nod or quietly say “hi” in passing, but none of them really seemed interested in getting into conversations with random strangers, which is understandable. I didn’t feel unwelcome or intrusive as I had feared, but more that my presence there was simply incidental. I guess the best way of putting it is that it was like being in a village of introverts who don’t pretend to be extroverts. Other things that seemed to be exaggerated in other people's trip reports were complaints about graffiti, stray dogs everywhere, panhandlers, etc. We never got panhandled, and there was some graffiti here and there (mostly on signs), but not in the natural areas. There were a few stray dogs (although it was unclear if some of them were just off-leash pets), but they were docile and almost never approached us. I wasn’t quite ready to leave, as the setting was starting to grow on me, but it was probably for the best that we headed out yesterday, given that my body and immune system seem to be jonesing for some R&R.

I can’t think of a better grand finale to swimming hole season than the ultimate swimming hole trek, so I guess that about wraps things up for this year. I definitely feel like I went out with a bang. I guess it’s time for me to go into hibernation so that my body (and my poor, poor wallet) can recover in time for next summer.