The preposterously vivid green-blue river flows wide and fast. Lush groves and gardens fill the canyon between red ferrous walls rising nearly vertically for thousands of feet. Two horses leisurely bathe and play in the river. Butterflies flit among purple aster, red penstemon, giant white cholla blossoms, orange globe mallow, purple lilac and yellow prickly pear blossoms, and large feathery yellow plants I can’t identify.
I walk past a Havasupai Indian sitting in the shade staring sadly at the fly-specked corpse of a horse who just dropped dead. “He didn’t drink enough water,” the man says mournfully. He is waiting for help to drag the animal off into the woods.
Life in paradise is not easy. The scenic beauty of Hualapai Canyon, part of the Grand Canyon, is about as close to paradise as you are likely to find in the United States. But its unique geography creates endless ironies.
The canyon is the heart of the small Havasupai Reservation, whose only town is Supai, which also happens to be the only town inside the Grand Canyon. Its distinctions hardly stop there. For example, it is the only town in the United States whose mail is delivered by mule train.
That is because Supai has no road. To reach the town, you drive to Seligman, on I-40 73 miles west of Flagstaff, Ariz., then northwest for half an hour on Route 66, then northeast on Arizona 18 for an hour. On Route 66, new versions of classic Burma Shave signs adorn the shoulder, including “You can drive a mile a minute. But there’s no future in it.” Then you park at Hualapai Hilltop (Confusingly, the canyon and hilltop are on the Havasupai Reservation, not the neighboring Hualapai Reservation). That’s the end of the road. Then you start walking.
It’s 8 miles and a 2,000-foot descent (most of it in the first steep mile) to the town of Supai at 3,200 feet, another mile to the first of five major waterfalls, still another mile still to a large campground strung along both banks of the river in the shade of massive cottonwoods and willows.
Aside from walking, the only ways into the canyon are on the back of a horse or mule or by helicopter. Between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, Sundays and Mondays, the whirlybirds take off from Hualapai Hilltop carrying tourists unable or unwilling to walk in and supplies too heavy or bulky for pack animals.
Those supplies include a handful of electric golf carts, the only vehicles in Supai, whose quiet dirt paths otherwise belong to pedestrians and animals.
When the copters are not flying, the silence is a palpable reminder of what life in the 19th century must have been like. Until you spend a few days without them, you are not aware how noisy our ubiquitous internal combustion engines and electric motors and generators are.
At night, frogs on the river bank are so loud they keep me awake. In the morning, the first sound I hear is birdsong. Most of the time, the loudest noise in Hualapai Canyon is the roar of the waterfalls, wide as well as high and carrying huge amounts of water. The river begins in puddles and springs that emerge from underground a mile or two upstream from the town, and flows through the canyon all the way down to the Colorado River.
This stream is the source of the life of this canyon. Without it, there would be no human settlement, no tourist visits, no oasis, no paradise. But it is also the source of regular, repeated tragedies. “Every year the river floods,” one Havasupai tells me, his voice heavy with fatalism learned the hard way. The last big flood was in 2012. But in 2008 an unusually devastating flash flood closed the canyon and destroyed much of the town and the camping area. It also killed the forest groves clinging to the rocks between the river and the canyon walls. Then a wildfire swept through the drowned trees. What is left today in some spots is a ghost forest, a standing warning of the depredations of a nature that seems bent on balancing every blessing with a curse.
Now much of the village looks brand new, as do the spotless facilities in the campground. Although a few tourists stay in the small lodge, most go to the 220 campsites, with more sites being added. Most of the tourists I talk to are foreign, from Lithuania, Canada, Germany, Japan.
In a sense, the village has taken advantage of tragedy to improve the life of its residents and the experience of tourists. It is altogether a cleaner, more pleasant town than when I first visited 14 years ago. The elementary school, the tourist office, the store, the café, the bright grassy yards and pastures, even the paths are immaculate. Despite the constant parade of mules, donkeys and horses up and down the main trail, it is far cleaner, of both animal and human refuse, than the trails of Grand Canyon National Park. Off to the side of the trail are numerous shiny new wheelbarrows used to haul feces to gardens and woods for fertilizer.
Also changed, perhaps by the experience of tragedy, is the attitude of the Havasupai. During my earlier visit, they seemed hostile, resentful of the stream of backpackers that poured through the little town on their way to the campground. They almost never greeted a stranger and would usually refuse to respond to an attempt at friendship, even with just a friendly wave or word.
Last month, when I returned, it was as if a different population had moved in. They were uniformly friendly, even willing to stop their tasks and chat.
While the temperature in the canyon can soar to well over 100 degrees in summer, this time of year it is ideal, ranging from a low in the high 40s at night to no more than the low 80s in the afternoon. The pools in the river at the base of the falls are warm enough for a dip and large enough for a swim. Their unique green-blue color is caused by lime washing off the rocks combining with leaves and twigs.
Reaching some of these falls and pools is somewhat of an adventure, although the trail looks more dangerous than it is.
The two relatively small 50-foot-high falls just below the town, New Navajo Falls and Rock Falls, are not easy to reach, requiring scrambling some distance along steep trails. These two falls replaced Navajo Falls, a big and important landmark that was erased by the 2008 flood. Fourteen years ago, my wife, my son, a friend and I swam beneath those falls. It is my fondest memory of that trip.
Below them, and just above the campground is 100-foot-high Havasu Falls, the most visited and photographed in the canyon. Along its banks life on a warm afternoon resembles Club Med, with young women in bikinis and young men stripped to the waist lolling on the rocks and beaches and jumping into a deep pool.
Just past the campground, the trail seemingly comes to an end at the top of 190-foot-high Mooney Falls, but look closely and you will see three ladders, handrails, chains and carved steeps dropping vertically to the pool below. Climbing down all that, believe it or not, is a lot of fun. In the next 3 miles you wade three times across the river. The trail then divides at a gigantic fan palm, a branch following each bank of the river. Both trails lead to more ladders and scrambles over boulders.
Then there it is, Beaver Falls. Several cascades drop into deep blue pools that are the best in the canyon for swimming. Still cool in April, the pools warm up quickly with the season.
The Havasupai have pulled off a stunning feat, preserving their unique natural heritage while finding a way to make a living off it. Visiting here is not cheap. Entrance and camping fees totaled about $200 for my wife and I for three nights.
To fully appreciate their achievement it is only necessary to look at the neighboring and much larger Hualapai Reservation. Just to the west of Havasupai, it too borders the Gand Canyon. Seeking to monetize nature, it has allowed a commercial contractor to build a glass shelf overhanging the Grand Canyon. For $25, tourists can walk out onto the small shelf and look down 4,000 feet. The development has been the subject of endless and heated controversy.
All over the world I have discovered wonderful places that I enjoyed immensely, but fearing the ravages of time and human greed, I have refused to revisit them. Hualapai Canyon has proved the great exception: It is as stunning as 14 years ago and an even more pleasant place to visit. Despite floods, wildfire, poverty, isolation and occasional human tragedies, including a murder in 2007 and a suicide in 2010, paradise endures.
(Photo of Supai waterfall by Thelma Bowles)
Responses to “Hualapai Canyon: A hard paradise”