Havasupai Trip: Tuesday

Tuesday:

We wake up early to shower and eat (peanut butter and jelly sammies and some fruit). We have about 70 miles to drive to the Hualapai Hilltop where we will leave the bags that are to be packed into the canyon on mules. We leave our stuff and head out.

From the hilltop there are some amazing and daunting vistas.

(this picture was actually taken on the last day as we left...the weather was more clear on the first day).

The hike begins with a 1 mile steep descent reminiscent of Squaw (Piestewa) Peak in Phoenix. Then, a 9 or 10 mile flatland hike through small canyons to the Supai village and eventually to the campground below Havasu Falls begins.

The 9 or 10 miles to the village are largely uneventful, and mostly boring looking (other than their vastness), so I didn't take any photos until we started to get into the verdant bottom, where water flows freely. The first 6 miles are just desert desert desert, and then all of a sudden:




(that's water in the bottom right)

We walk through overgrown foliage like this for another 2 miles or so, crossing the creek a number of times. The creek is sourced by melting snow in mountains far away, rain, and water that seeps slowly out of the stone cliffs themselves (more on this later).

Wi'igliva (spelling varies) marks the arrival at Supai. These two stones are supposedly ancient protectors of the Supai.



The Supai village is a little bit of mindfuck. In the words of my dad, "It's got a bit of that 3rd world thing going for it, doesn't it?" This is a fairly accurate description of the shitty attempts at farming, and emaciated horses tied tightly in the sun next to dilapidated houses. The place is spotted occasionally by flowers (cactus flowers are in full bloom during this trip), but the road is heavy heavy sand, like beach sand. The going gets really slow, and our shoes fill up. We stop for a quick bean burrito at the cafeteria, and then proceed. Just outside of the village, we hit our first real water.



This sort of water yields fantastic greenery. We continue:



Here are the first real falls that we found. These peak out of a green cliff side and fall a total of about 50 feet.



Then we proceed another long ways on that beach sand until we actually see Havasu Falls. It is impressive, indeed. This falls a little short of 100 feet I think.



And it forms the first of the famous terraced pools. The water is a sort of luminescent green-blue because of lime deposits in the sand.



Ugh, I'm tired of typing, and hungry. We keep going, get to the camp site, it's packed. We carry our bags in about halfway down a mile long campsite. I rinse off in the river, and we eat and then sleep.

Total mileage for the day: approx. 14 miles.

I look pretty rough before going to sleep:

Havasupai Trip: Monday

Monday:

I wake up at 6:15am to finish packing and go to my parents' house. Ashbaby and Lou Bega had just cleaned the house (aka moved all my shit) so that last little bit of packing took way longer than I expected. This didn't really matter though, as my dad takes forever to do everything, so we didn't hit the road until two hours later than we wanted.

We drive to Flagstaff and eat at an Olive Garden. Cute hostess

We continue through Williams (Road Kill Cafe) to Seligman and eventually to a hotel called Caverns Inn or Canyon Caverns Inn or something. The hotel is located near the Grand Canyon Caverns (which really have nothing to do with The Grand Canyon other than maybe some air from the cavern exits a Grand Canyon wall). We toured these caverns, which are dry (they are no longer growing, probably because of tourism and such). They weren't too bad. Some cool selenite formations, and a dead bobcat, and some 50 year old government rations (the gov't wanted to use it as a fallout shelter during the Cuban missile crisis, so they stocked it with a bunch of crackers and candy and shit). We eat at the cafe there afterwards.