Email this article

Back to Havasu Falls

A return visitor sees paradise in a different light

Found in: | Outside | Hiking |

t took only one glimpse of the glowing turquoise waterfall, tumbling more than a hundred feet from clay-red cliffs, for me to decide that Havasu Falls was paradise. My family and I had tromped 10 miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, down more than 1,000 vertical feet of switchbacks, through narrow washes, and alongside a swift cottonwood-shaded stream to reach it. Our legs trembled and our brows sweated big salty drips as we dropped our bulging packs.

Bone-tired, I surveyed the scene: The waterfall thundered over the cliff, drowned out our voices, and sprayed us with skin-tingling mist. Swim-suited bathers lounged by the milky teal pools, one cascading into the next, and a warm, Mediterranean sun soaked the area like a beach. It was so otherworldly and beautiful I felt as if we had discovered the keys to some unearthly dimension, very far from our home in Boston. My legs ached, yet I stood there, agape. I was a gawky 10-year-old, and it was the first backpacking trip of my life.

We spent the next four days lounging about in the pools, playing cards at night, and sleeping like sardines in our four-person tent. I loved clambering over rocks in search of secret caves, discovering turquoise pools hidden in the cottonwoods, and looking up at the stars that freckled the night sky. I loved the spell of isolation, the thrill of a seemingly impossible challenge, and the feeling of accomplishment after completing it.

About 20 years have passed since that Havasu trip, but the hazy sun-bleached memory of Havasu Falls is still burned in my mind, as if an emblem of the possibility of adventure. I've since departed from my urban upbringing and settled in the West to a life interwoven with the outdoors.

Last fall, I decided to finally return to Havasu. I knew it wouldn't look exactly the same: A flood had ripped through the Havasupai Reservation in 2008, damaging the trail, rerouting the river, killing one waterfall, and creating two new ones. Yet I quietly hoped that I would find the same spiritually beautiful place - or at least the same feeling of revelation.

Two friends, Kara and Danielle, my boyfriend, Andrew, and I made campground reservations and set off on a sunny, breezy October day. We bounded down the switchbacks and wound our way through the low canyons. We spotted a coyote hiding in the desert brush and speculated on the origins of rocky debris frozen in the cliffs. We passed groups of kids who, bent under the weight of their packs and grimacing with effort, reminded me of my younger self. Every so often a horse train rumbled by, dust rising in its wake. After eight miles of effortless hiking, we passed through Supai, the Havasupai Indians' town at the bottom of the canyon, and two miles later reached Havasu Falls.

The cataract fell in shades of light green and blue into an inviting pool that in turn cascaded into other pools. It had changed its course slightly after the flood but otherwise looked precisely the same as I remembered it. And yet, instead of childlike awe, I felt the simple peacefulness of appreciation.

In other spots, the flood had drastically changed the landscape. In one section of the canyon, the water ripped through the riverbanks and transformed football-field-size areas into what looked like bulldozed construction zones. The campground looked as if a giant had danced through with a broom, sweeping away debris and flattening vegetation.

It's funny how a place can act as a yardstick for one's own change. As much as Havasu had evolved, I realized that I had evolved more. For one, I wasn't looking through the distorted lens of exhaustion. In the 20 years that had passed, I had not only gathered a trove of wilderness experience, I had become immeasurably stronger, in many senses. To my more seasoned eyes, this place seemed less like a wild, remote idyll and more like a fun, lively but trash-strewn amusement park, packed with paunchy, pale-skinned tourists.

We camped at the last available campsite, directly over Mooney Falls, which plunges 150 feet from the lip of a travertine amphitheater. After a morning lounging by Havasu Falls' pool in the nourishing sunshine, we set our sights on a goal that seemed a little ambitious for our languid moods: hiking the eight rugged miles to the Colorado River and back. But why not try?

The next morning, we clambered down to the base of Mooney Falls, clinging to chains fixed by rickety metal stakes and palming about in dark tunnels dynamited through the rock. As we followed Havasu Creek's course, the flocks of people quickly thinned. After a passing a precarious rope swing fashioned with bicycle handlebars, we saw virtually no one.

The trail then became less reliable, as it meandered and disappeared through low canyons and fields of shoulder-high greenery. We crossed the creek countless times, shimmying along logs that had fallen across it and wading waist-high into the cool turquoise water. Where sand didn't line the creek bottom, there were rocks as large and smooth as ostrich eggs.

As we traveled farther down Havasu Creek, the walls of the canyon slowly grew deeper and narrower until they stretched some 1,000 feet into the sky in hues of terracotta. We scrambled up a bank where a rudimentary rope was fixed, clawed down rocky embankments, ogled the yellow and red wildflowers growing in the cliffs, and two-stepped through cactus gardens, so artfully spaced it seemed they had been planted. For how civilized the campground felt, this was positively wild.

Finally we ran into a group of river runners hiking up toward Havasu.

"Hello beautiful canyon people!" called one tall, tanned, dark-haired man, as if we were two peaceable tribes meeting in the wild. They told us they had been hiking for about an hour, which made us realize that perhaps we could make it to the mighty Colorado, which had seemed so distant a goal, before dark.

We hastened our footsteps and cruised around rock amphitheaters flanking the stream and through squadrons of butterflies, quarter-size bumblebees and dragonflies. Every bend in the canyon seemed to lead to yet another bend. But finally, we rounded one last curve and heard a new noise, a deeper rumble, over the melodic rushing of Havasu Creek. And finally the source came into view: the wide, murky, torrent of the Colorado. On the rocky shore, the rest of the river runners' group sat there with their boats - a strange and unfamiliar clan.

"Want a beer?" one shaggy wild-eyed boatman asked, proffering cans of Modelo and Budweiser that he pulled from a cooler. Though perhaps it wasn't such a stretch for four reasonably fit hikers to make the rugged, overgrown eight-mile schlep to the Colorado River, it still felt like a small accomplishment.

We kicked off our shoes to cool our feet in the water and sat back against the sun-warmed rock. I sat there, resting my legs, taking in the sound of the gushing water, the swim-suited river runners, and the spectacle of Havasu Creek's turquoise waters colliding with the Colorado's churning brown soup. I realized that at least one thing about me hadn't changed in the last 20 years: my love for the thrill of a new adventure. In that moment, that remote, beautiful confluence deep in the Grand Canyon felt just a little like paradise.

Kate Siber works as a freelance writer in Durango, Colo. She sneaks away from the desk to explore the outdoors by foot, ski and bike as much as possible without her editors noticing.