Havasupi

We spent the night at Wade's parents house and left at 4am on Friday for the top of the canyon. We started hiking in at about 9. The hike in was pretty easy. If I hadn't had the dumb backpack it would have been like a leisurely walk in the park. It was cloudy and breezy, perfect weather for hiking. We got into the village about lunch time and had a cold coke and ate some Ramon Noodle {jet boil is awesome}. Wade and I dropped our stuff at the village lodge {which was better than I thought it would be} and started down the trail to see what damage the flood had done at the end of last summer. The village didn't seem affected at all. Wade was in Havasupi almost exactly a year ago, for me it has been 13 years! About a mile from the village we noticed a little trail off the main one, we decided it needed exploring, it came out at the newest fall created by the flood, some call it the 50ft fall as it has yet to be named its the top middle right photo above. It is pretty cool, but the ground is rather unstable around it and there are no good jumping pools! At this point you can really see the devastation from the flood. No picture we took could adequately portray the amount of ground that was displaced and moved down river. We followed the trail down to the next fall which I will call the "New Navajo" cause it hasn't been named either, but its the closest to where Navajo used to be. Its the fall in the bottom middle left! It is an awesome fall. Its about 30 ft high and you can jump from the top or there is a little shelf down below and you can jump through the fall from about 5ft up. The pool at the bottom is pretty deep as well. The pic of Wade at the bottom middle right shows both of the new falls and all the devastation in between. The wall of water that took out all that dirt, rock and vegetation must have been HUGE!! Anyway we wandered down to Havasu Falls which is pretty much the same except the pool area is smaller and the fall about 15 feet short because the flood took out 15 ft of rock from the top of the falls. The campground is pretty sad, the flood left about 5 ft of dirt over most of it, killing the trees and leaving it rather barren looking. We hiked down to the top of Mooney, but didn't go down. Mooney Falls looked pretty untouched, the pool was smaller... By then I was exhausted. We made our way back to the village 16 miles for me in one day-UG!! We had dinner and went to bed by 8!

Saturday we went to all the falls, played around below Mooney at the rope swings, none of them are really usable, as the pools are to small, but it was fun to watch people try!! Despite the flooding, the green is already starting to come back, the water is still crystal blue and the falls are still beautiful!

Sunday we hiked out at 6am and were home at 5:00, dead tired. It was a great trip!