Havasu Falls Backpacking Trip

Daniel and I at the beginning of our grand adventure. 

Our trip to Havasu Falls was fantastic. We had so much fun and learned a lot about our limits. We achieved a massive hike, slept under the stars, ate dehydrated food, swam in the falls, and rode in a helicopter. I'd say that's a successful adventure. Here's the whole story.

First look at the climb down,
check out that nervous, excited expression.

 We started out by gathering all of the necessary supplies. This required about 17 and a half million trips to our favorite outdoor store, REI. When we finally felt like we had it all and there couldn't possibly be anything we'd missed, we started packing. The bag just kept getting heavier and heavier and heavier. But thankfully eventually it stopped. :)

Daniel about 20 minutes after the start of our descent. 

Weighing in at approx. 37lbs, my pack was about all I could handle. Daniel's was a little heavier, closer to 50 lbs I think.  After our bags had been packed and it seemed we were mostly ready, it was time to be off to bed. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep around 7:30 that night. I am not very good at having no sleep, and I knew we'd be getting on the road pretty early.

  

Pack mules, carrying mail from the village. 

 And, I was right. Bright and early at 3:15 I was shaken awake by a crazy man, named Daniel. We packed the car and were on the road by 4:00. We traveled up the winding mountain roads through Central Arizona and arrived in Seligman at around 7:00 which meant we still had about 2 and half hours left on our drive.

Lunch stop :) I was so happy to refuel

 So, I decided to take a nap. And the time just flew by, because when I woke up at 9:30, it felt like I'd only been asleep for about 2 minutes. But, we had finally made it to Hilltop. We got out and used the public restrooms, the last ones that would be available until we arrived in Supai. We drank some water, strapped on our pack and got ready to climb down the side of the Canyon. 

Havasu Falls - First Look

We saw a ton of cool things along the way, I could probably write for days, but nobody wants to read that and I don't want hand cramps. The most impressive thing was the mule teams. There would be huge groups of mules carrying stuff up the side of the canyon. Amazing how strong and in-sync they are. They knew exactly where to go and stayed out of the way of people. Just incredible. 

These flowers were everywhere down there. The Sacred Datura

Another cool thing was the place we stopped for lunch. There was a cave cut out of the rock, presumably by rushing water. It had a faint smell of guano, so I assume bats lived there. It was beautiful. Oh, by the way, we stopped for lunch around 11:30. It was fantastic, wheat thins, cajun turkey, and cubed cheese. So, delicious. We started up our hike again and kept pushing hard for about an hour and a half, then we took another short break. At this point we were both getting pretty tired. We pushed on and made it into the village at 2:30.  We checked in at the tourism office and hiked the last two miles towards the campsite and Havasu Falls. When we finally made it to Havasu Falls, we were so excited we'd done it we didn't even wait until after setting up camp to dive right into the water. We threw off our shoes and got down to the water as fast as we could. After playing around for a little while we found a nice picnic table and took a nap. 

Mooney Falls - First Look

At around 4:30 we got up, hiked another half mile to our campsite and pitched the tent. After that we found a natural spring from which we gathered water to replenish our camelbacks and thirsty bodies. We had a lovely dehydrated dinner, wandered around a bit, and then got ready for bed. It got dark pretty quickly and we were thankful because the day was exhausting. 

The climb down to the bottom of Mooney Falls

I woke up sore, and Daniel had some blisters on his feet, but we had a lot more to see so we kept going.  We got up, ate a fantastic dehydrated breakfast meal, and started the hike down to Mooney Falls. When we got there I was quite shocked at the level of difficulty of the descent to the bottom of the falls. Daniel told me it was going to be an adventure, but this was a lot more than I expected, and oh boy was it exciting. I felt like such a dare devil. Crawling through rock tunnels, and scaling the wall of a cliff without a harness, what a thrill. And so worth it. Mooney Falls is probably the most beautiful single waterfall I have ever seen in person. 

Mooney Falls - From the Bottom

Since the waterfall is on a drop of about 300 ft, the force that it produces is amazing. Standing about 30 yards from it I felt like I was in the middle of a rainstorm of hurricane magnitude. Just Stunning.  We played around down there for a while and then made the climb out and headed towards the village. We had lunch and just hung out for the rest of the day. 

View of the village from the helicopter

 The next day, we woke up had breakfast, and got in line for the helicopter ride out of the canyon back to Hilltop. (the location of the trail head) Neither one of us had ever been on a helicopter before and we thought it would be better for both of us, not to make the trip out of the canyon on foot. The view from the helicopter was amazing. It was neat to get a different perspective on all the things we got to see. 

Me in the helicopter

Daniel in the helicopter

As you can see from the pictures, we were both pretty excited. We got back to Hilltop around noon and started the drive back home. We made it at around 6 and I went straight to bed. Daniel, poor thing, had to go to captains meeting for his Ultimate Frisbee team. All in all it was a successful trip and I'm so glad we took it. 

Best photo of the trip. I think. :) Great job Daniel for taking a great shot