Havasupai Reservation

Geeks Afield

Grand Canyon Hike – Havasupai Reservation

Links for this hike

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My brother Jeff and I hiked the National Park portion of the Grand Canyon down to Bright Angel Campground in April of 2002. We did it for my 50th birthday.

Fast forward a few years, and I am on slightly inebriated float down a scenic river in northern Arkansas with my daughter and her family, my son and his girlfriend, and one of my non hiking brothers. The conversation turned to that hike I took a few years ago, and out of that a scheme was formulated for my son-in-law, son and I to do it again. Jeff was dragged in once again at a later date. This would make another Grand Canyon hike for my 55th and a first one for Robin’s 45th.

We were juggling the constraints of our four schedules, and finally settled on a week in March that would work for all concerned. Long story short, we could not get a permit to hike the National Park portion of the Grand Canyon. One of the constraints was that we had to do it during my son’s spring break from Nursing School. Turns out that week was spring break for every college in the nation, and every kid who could not get a reservation in Florida or Mexico had decided to go to the Grand Canyon.

As a second choice we settled on the hiking the Havasupai portion of the Grand Canyon. I say settled because I had heard good things and bad things about this hike and location. However, those wonderful scenic waterfalls you see in all the pictures are in this portion of the Grand Canyon. Our tag line for vacations, hikes, etc., especially when things go less than optimal is, “It’s an adventure!” Of course, usually it is meant as, “Go with the flow and chill out, Dude.”

So we chilled and got the necessary permits and reservations.

One of our concerns was that a female Japanese tourist had been viciously murdered just outside Supai less than a year ago. We talked about that amongst ourselves and decided it was just an isolated incident that could happen anywhere. Plus she had been traveling alone. We were in group of four manly men.

The appointed day, March 23, 2007, came and we had gathered in Norman, OK. We drove that first day and spent the night in Flagstaff. We got up early the next morning and drove on to the National Park portion of the Grand Canyon. My son had never seen it, and I thought it would be amiss to be that close and not take him up there. I remember how awe inspiring it was the first time I saw the Grand Canyon. I take nearly as much pleasure from introducing someone to this wonder of erosion and time.

We camped at the park the second night. Our plan was to drive a reasonably short distance and time via dirt roads over to the Havasupai Reservation. We had done our homework — we thought! We had gone online, and Google mapped, and we had a set of directions and Internet maps to guide us on this portion of the journey.

My first inkling that this might not be workable is after we had stopped at Wally World and I had bought a DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer of Arizona. I could see where our journey started off the main highway, but the rest of the roads mapped from the Internet did not appear on this map. We did what was probably a very wise thing, and talked to one of the Park Rangers about our plan. He quickly discouraged us. I’m going to paraphrase here as he was an extremely colorful character, and I don’t remember his exact words. He told us if we took that route to have a week’s worth of food and water with us and a couple of extra spare tires. He said the best plan was to follow the road grader, but that would just put us in his front yard come the end of the day. He commented that the Indians really did not like folks out there and road signs had a way of disappearing or becoming misleading. He also said we might need wire snips as fences had a way of popping up over the road. If his goal was to dissuade us from this route, he succeeded.

So instead we arose extra early the next day, well before sunrise and took the long route to the Havasupai Reservation. Instead of the 1 ½ or two hour ride we were expecting we had a 3+ hour ride.

We finally arrived at the trail head about the time we had meant. This was our first indication that all was not idyllic. The area at the top to trail head is trashy. There are several abandoned vehicles. Buildings are in disrepair. It really made you wonder about leaving your vehicle there.

Nevertheless, we strapped on our packs, grabbed our walking poles and took off down into the canyon. The first 1 /1/2 or 2 miles is extremely steep and is one tight switchback after another. This is not so problematic on the descent, but coming up is a different story

Initially the trail is wide, but eventually it begins to run through a canyon. It was early in the morning and we were meeting folks hiking out. We were also meeting Indians driving pack horses up to the top of the canyon. There are no roads to the reservation. Everything comes and goes, either by foot, by pack animal, or by helicopter.

In the campground they have some new composting toilets, but they also have a large number of port-o-johns. They helicopter the empty ones in and helicopter the FULL ones out. I wanted to get a picture of this, but the day they were trying to do this, they decided it was too windy. That would have been quite the picture, flying port-o-johns.

The next indication that this might not be Shangri-la came from the Indians themselves. Most folks hiking into the canyon, including us, are stroked heading off on this big adventure. We were feeling good about ourselves and humanity in general. I started off greeting the Indians we encountered, but soon quit. It did not seem appreciated. Initially I chalked it up to cultural differences. I think there is a component of that to it, but I also feel from my encounters on the trip and what I have read afterwards there is resentment towards the visitors.

Once the Indians get the pack animals away from the village and in the canyon, they untie the horses from each other. They then drive the horses in front of them and up the canyon. At least in one portion of the canyon that first day, they were driving them hard and yelling, “out of the way, out of the way…” All the hikers had to get off to the side as the horses came galloping by.

The most depressing part of the hike is going through Supai. The houses do not look well maintained. There was trash every where you looked. There was a ditch running along the trail that may have been a sugar ditch. The folks we encountered were uniformly unfriendly. I had expected to buy some souvenirs at Supai, but none were to be had. I was going to buy some at the GCNP, but every Indian souvenir I picked up had a made in China label or a label identifying as not from Native American sources. I wanted the genuine article.

The lack of Native American souvenirs makes one wonder. One of the problems among the Havasupai appeared to this outsider to be time. They do not appear to have much of anything to do to occupy theirs. The main source of employment are the tourists hiking in and out, and driving pack trains up and down the canyon. They do have satellite TV. This was strongly evidenced by many of the teenagers dressed hip-hop with a Walkman hanging around their necks. I, for one, am willing to pay a premium for actual Native American handiwork. It irked me to be shopping at a National Park for Native American craft, and all I could find was “made in China”.

We passed through Supai, hiked another couple miles to campground, and realized why we had come. The falls are absolutely gorgeous. You pass Havasu Falls first, billed as the world’s best swimming hole. It may well be, it had turned off cold and none of us were brave enough to spend more than a few minutes in the water.

The campground is situated between Havasu Falls and Mooney Falls along the Havasupai River. It is a primitive campground, but spring water is available. It was crowded, full of college kids, Boy Scouts, and one very pretty Asian woman. Remember it was spring break week for everyone in America. We found a spot, and made camp. We did a little exploring that first afternoon, but not much. We were all tired from the early start, and the 10 mile hike.

The next day the four of us hiked down the Havasupai River all the way to Beaver Falls. It is about a 200 foot change in elevation from the top of Mooney Falls to the river. Part of the climb down goes thru a couple tunnels chiseled out of the cliff face. On another part you are hanging onto a chain as you look for steel pegs driven into the cliff face. The last little bit of the climb down is an aluminum ladder fastened to the cliff. Quite entertaining.

From there, you follow the river, crossing it several times. It seemed like with every step a new vista came into focus and someone was stopping and taking a picture. Standing at the top of the canyon, in the harsh desert environment, it is hard to imagine that anything as lush and as beautiful would be at the bottom. It is a verdant, riparian habitat with turquoise blue water flowing down the Havasupai River. There are large water falls, and many, many smaller ones. It was green every where you looked. Then through out the river are these travertine formations creating an exotic feel. Towering above it all are cliff walls with strata uncovered by erosion revealing eon after eon. I understand why the Havasupai feel so reverent about this canyon.

I could spend page after page attempting to paint word pictures of this place, but I believe I will let the photographs speak for themselves.

The last part that day’s hike was up a rope ladder of sorts, up another cliff face, and finally on to Beaver Falls. Then we turned around and did it all in reverse. The weather was perfect for hiking, but not so perfect for swimming.

Some people say, “God takes care of ol’ folks an’ fools.” I qualify on both counts. The second day we were there something or somebody was looking out for us. Jeff and I both have free standing backpacking tents. Most of our hiking has been in Arkansas along trails. We hike all day, camp, and get up and do again. Because we are pretty much in our tents as soon as we set them up, and packing them up as soon as we are out of them, staking them has not been a big deal. Neither one of us thought to stake our tents before we took off to Beaver Falls. About mid-morning the wind pick considerably and blew in the cold front that took away swimming. When we got back from our hike we discovered our tents oriented slightly different and STAKED. The college kids in the camp next to ours had rescued them from the river. In mine was a down sleeping bag, my full backpack, and much of David’s equipment. Jeff’s tent was similarly weighted down. I’m here to tell you a closed up tent acts very much like a kite and can lift quite a bit of weight. Fortunately, all our equipment was there and dry. Sometimes it pays to be lucky.

Further down the campgrounds there were some folks camped out just above Mooney Falls. At least one of their tents took the 200 foot plunge into the pool at the bottom of the falls. I never did hear what happened to all their equipment.

The next day, Robin, my son-in-law, hooked up with another group and did that same hike again, and then added the segment of going all the way to the Colorado River. They left early in the morning, and returned just about dark-thirty. It was late enough we had began to worry a little. Actually, I was dreading telling my daughter, “I lost your husband.” He has some wonderful pictures of that segment of the Havasupai River.

David and I hiked back down to the rope ladder before Beaver Falls, taking our time and taking lots of pictures. Jeff spent a relaxing day in camp. I think he was resting his muscles before the climb out the next day.

The last day we got an early start to hike out of the canyon, even beating the start of a lot of the pack trains. It felt rather strange going through Supai after the beauty of the canyon and water falls. Again we had to watch out for pack horses being driven pell-mell up the canyon.

Several miles into the hike out I passed a saddled horse tied up to a tree. My thought was there was a Havasupai answering the call of nature behind a rock somewhere, and kept on hiking. The other members of the expedition saw the same animal, and had the same general thoughts. They, too, kept on hiking. I did not see the rest of this incidence as I had gotten a little ahead of the group, but the rest of the gang did. They related the following tale to me.

They heard a horse coming up behind them. On this horse was a backpacker complete with backpack and walking poles. Apparently, this “hiker” had decided to commandeer the previously mentioned animal, he rode on past my comrades. They saw him jump off the horse shortly thereafter. Our upstanding citizen saw a pack train coming his way. He had met the only Caucasian we saw leading a pack train. They said they could not hear the conversation very well, but it was something about staying off the horse and just to leave it there.

Our horse thief did not argue, but as soon as the pack train was out of sight he jumped back on. He nearly fell off this time as whoever had left the horse had done the proper thing and loosened the cinch on the saddle. Apparently, Jesse James rode the horse to the point where the major climb started and left the animal there. I asked my companions how old this person was. I was expected an answer in the range of late teens to early twenties, but apparently this was thirty-some man. There might be a reason the Havasupai have some animosity towards the tourists.

I’ll be the first to tell you the last mile and half was pretty much hell. I had been swimming a lot, but due to the St. Louis winter I had not been outside running or walking as much as I should have been. I made it to the top, and I did not stroke out or have a heart attack, so I figure I will live to be 110. I plan on alternating those very golden years between my two children’s home. It is a tough climb, but if you are in reasonable shape and take your time you can do it. Or you can book some horses for the ride in and out, or just the ride out. I would strongly suggest booking the horses. They used to hang horse thieves in that part of the world.

We piled back into the van, drove to Albuquerque, and we spent the night in a cheap motel. We drove back into Norman the next day. My son, God bless him, drove to Batesville, AR that same day so he could do a shift at the hospital the next day.