Hiking into Spring

I shivered in the dawn chill of a spring morning as I cinched up my heavy backpack and began my descent into the canyon below. The dark trail soon began to drop precipitously, and I could see in the distance the sun beginning to play on the walls of Havasu Canyon, a South Rim offshoot of the mighty Grand Canyon.

Eight miles down--and just then waking up--was the centuries-old village of Supai, center of the surrounding Havasupai Indian Reservation. Through Supai runs life-giving Havasu Creek, an aberration in this arid country. It springs mysteriously from the Coconino Plateau above, and speeds through Havasu Canyon, plunging over cataracts to meet the Colorado River.

I had spent the previous week hiking the bone-dry inner Grand Canyon, 20 miles east of here. Now I was eager to explore Havasu Canyon and to get doused by its thundering waterfalls. I would camp at the bottom for two days and do day hikes, respecting ancestral lands by sticking only to the two paths sanctioned by the Havasupai tribe for outsider use: the main Hualapai Trail I was on, and the less used Topocoba Trail. Along the way and in the village, I hoped to talk with some of the Havasupai and hear them speaking in their native tongue.

The tribe lives on one of the most isolated Native American reservations in the United States. Their language, also called Havasupai, is spoken only in this canyon. I knew that the number of American Indian languages in daily use had declined since European contact, and I wondered if Havasupai was faring any better. I suspected it is mostly used by the older generation.

Suddenly, I heard a snort. Seconds later, horses materialized from around a bend of the still-dark trail. Flattening myself against the sandstone wall of a narrow switchback in order to let them pass, I breathed a “howdy” as the mount and its sleepy-looking rider slid by with two horses in tow. The wrangler, who had dark braids and wore a baseball cap, only stared as he passed by.

Minutes later I leaped back against the wall again. Another Havasupai rider, trailing a pack train of horses laden with baskets, trudged by, headed up to the canyon rim. He was wearing a T-shirt that said “Zorro,” and his raven eyes quietly bored holes through me.

Shortly, I heard hooves again. This time, a mule train, hellbent for the hilltop, threw up a dust screen.

“Nice day,” I offered. Its lead rider eyed me silently as he glided by. Bob Marley looked out from his T-shirt.

I drank some water from my canteen and pushed on deeper into Havasu Canyon, puzzled by the silent reception.

*

At the top, these riders would mount up guests, supplies and mail and, at mid-morning, head back down to Supai. A few years ago the Havasupai decided there would be no road into the canyon. Villagers and visitors must go by foot, horseback or helicopter. Supai is said to be the only town in the U.S. that gets mail by mule.

The morning heated up. The trail gets very hot in summer; spring and fall are the best times for hiking. A heavily laden pack train carrying out guests and their gear plodded by. Canyon wrens sped down the canyon as a hawk circled above. Some lizards took cover.

By midmorning, signs of the Supai village began appearing down the widening, pale-red canyon, through which runs Havasu Creek. A young village girl watched me from atop her little pony as it drank from a smaller stream. Homes, farming equipment and planted fields soon came into view.

I reached the village about four hours from the time I’d started my trek down from Hualapai Hilltop, eight miles above. Havasupai homes were dwarfed by towering walls of ancient red rock, and I could see the tan cliffs of the Coconino Plateau, where I had come from, in the distance.

I walked past the Supai post office. Elderly men, in a timeless village scene, were gabbing in Havasupai in the shade of the old wood and sandstone building. Havasupai is a dialect of the Yuman language, distinct from the languages of the nearby Navajo and Hopi tribes. The men fell silent when I stopped.

I went to the Havasupai Tourist Enterprise office, a ranch house with a large porch where hikers are expected to check in (reservations must be made several weeks in advance). For $15, I got the required entry permit from a soft-spoken village elder. He was preoccupied by an argument between some Belgian and German hikers. I paid an extra $10 per night for camping.

Like their ancestors, who have been in this canyon at least since the 14th century, the Havasupai get around only by foot or on horseback. They farm the canyon floor in summer, and hunt game and collect wild plants on the Coconino Plateau above in the winter. They coexist with their neighbors, the Hualapai, also a Yuman-speaking tribe whose reservation begins 13 miles west.

The Havasupai suffered when whites moved into the Grand Canyon area in the late 1800s. By the 1950s they had been restricted to only a tiny reservation, what is essentially Supai village. They protested, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the federal government gave back 180,000 acres of ancestral lands.

Tourism arrived soon after, and it was an economic boon. The villagers handle it well, seeming to carry on with their lives as if the visitors are not there at all, as I was finding out. I respected their privacy, but I was itching to ask questions.

*

The village has a motel-style, 24-room lodge, a campground, a modest cafe serving wholesome fare at reasonable prices (“Indian tacos”--red beans, beef, lettuce, onion and cheese on Indian fry bread--are $4.50), and a small general store where you can buy groceries.

There is also the Havasupai Tribal Arts Museum, which has displays on tribal history and crafts and is a meeting place for local artists. The day I visited, the curator, a Havasupai woman, was helping one artist frame a silk-screen depicting the human race emerging from the Grand Canyon.

At the cafe, I heard the cashier toss some Havasupai words into a conversation with an older village woman. But as I got up to leave, I wondered if the younger woman was able to carry on whole conversations in the old tongue, as the older woman could.

Yellow warblers, swooping from willow to willow, followed me as I headed down the dusty canyon toward the campground, a mile and a half farther and well away from the central village. Insects filled the air as I came onto a series of cascades called Navajo Falls, after a Havasupai chief who, the story goes, was kidnapped by the Navajos.

Farther on, red tanagers darted excitedly around a chasm over which Havasu Creek roared to produce the twin cascades of Havasu Falls, falling 100 feet into a stunning turquoise pool. From an overhanging boulder, some teenagers were leaping in, coming as close as they could to the pounding white water. Bubbling up, the clear water turns a deep blue-green, as if by magic. In fact, Havasupai means “people of the blue-green water.”

The reason for the color is that, over the years, carbonate minerals have settled to the bottom of the creek, turning it white. The pool acts like a giant reflector, mixing the greens and browns of the surrounding cliffs with the deep blue of the sky to produce the unique color.

*

A mile from Havasu Falls, the trail drops breathtakingly down one of the jagged travertine cliffs to reach the base of even more spectacular cataracts, Mooney Falls.

A dusty visitors campground stretches three-quarters of a mile along the creek here, between the two falls. I set my gear on an empty site and hustled back to Havasu Falls for a dip. At the boulder, a skinny kid advised: “Jump in feet-first, or you’ll lose your shorts.” Some Japanese tourists snapped my picture as I leaped.

By evening, colorful tents had sprung up everywhere, although it wasn’t as crowded as it can be in spring. I got water at a spring that flows out of a fern-covered wall, then shared a camp stove (no open fires are allowed, and cutting firewood is prohibited). Some Arizona college students played poker around a sputtering propane lamp.

The next morning I climbed a steep side canyon toward a brilliant blue sky still lighted by a fading moon. Barrel cactus, prickly pear, yucca and other desert flora marched right up to upstart ferns, mosses and small willows sprouting from water seeps in the canyon walls.

After a hard climb, I got to a viewpoint where I could see Havasu Creek far below, rushing from Mooney Falls toward the Colorado River eight miles away in the Grand Canyon.

Toward evening I scrambled (no easy trail) two miles down that route, meeting five college students who were returning from the round-trip hike to the Colorado River. They had started at dawn, said it was a chore, but were glad to have done it. They talked about the birds, the travertine falls, the isolation and the rafting party they had seen on the Colorado. That second night, from my campsite by the creek, I watched a brilliant meteor shower in the clear desert sky.

*

I hiked out early the next morning. The cool night air was still hanging in Havasu Canyon. Mist from Havasu Falls made the centuries-old rock path slippery. Passing corrals, I strained to hear the Havasupai wranglers talking to their horses. The village disappeared behind me. The narrowing canyon glowed burnt orange in the rising sun. A horse train overtook me as I climbed.

I saw a lone man, who appeared to be a Havasupai, walking down the trail toward me. He was a slight man, wearing a Buddha-like smile. He seemed delighted to see me and surprised me by opening a conversation. We sat on some red sandstone boulders.

Neil Uqualla was his name, and he was returning to visit Supai, his childhood home. Now living with his Hopi wife in Second Mesa, a town on the Hopi Reservation in eastern Arizona, he hadn’t been back here for two years. As a youth, he had caught rainbow trout in the Colorado, and hunted elk and mule deer on the Coconino Plateau. He had learned the old ways from his father and his father’s father.

We discovered that we were both born in 1937, that we loved 1955 Chevrolets, that we’d been teenagers in the U.S. Air Force the same years. Our chance meeting was clearly important to both of us.

Some young Havasupai wranglers--the same ones who had looked me over silently two days before--passed by and rode over to welcome Uqualla. Havasupai flowed easily between them as they glanced over at me. After a while, Uqualla said they had been talking about fishing and hunting and girlfriends, wives and children . . . and girlfriends. He laughed. He told me that the Havasupai language was indeed being passed on to these younger people. He smiled at them and said they chased girls around too much, though, and depended too much on the village store, too little on farming.

Two of the wranglers approached me. “Where did you get that?” asked one, pointing with obvious approval to my chest. Then it slowly dawned on me what they had been looking at so intently two days earlier. On my shirt was a big salmon. And below were the words “Spawn Till You Die!”

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GUIDEBOOK

Exploring the Territory of the Havasupai

Getting there: From Flagstaff, Ariz., it is about a three-hour drive to Hualapai Hilltop, where the Hualapai Trail into Havasu Canyon begins. (There is an unguarded parking lot; don’t leave valuables in your car.) Take Interstate 40 to Seligman (last chance for gas), then follow U.S. 66 for 37 miles to the signed Supai turnoff. Turn onto Indian Route 18, a paved road, for 64 miles to the end (there are no services on this road). Coming from Las Vegas, the drive to Havasu Canyon takes nearly five hours.

From the trail head it is eight miles to the village of Supai, another 1 1/2 miles to the campground.

Where to stay: Reservations are needed to camp at Supai, which costs $10 per person per night. To hold a spot, a 50% deposit is required six weeks in advance. Write to the Havasupai Tourist Enterprise, Supai, AZ 86435; telephone (520) 448-2121. Pick up permits at the campers’ office in Supai, where you will also pay $15 for an entry permit to the canyon. The campground has water, tables and toilets. No fires are allowed. Bring your own cookstove.

Havasupai Lodge (tel. [520] 448-2111) has 24 rooms, each with two queen beds and a bathroom. Rates are $75 to $96 per night. There is a gift shop where Havasupai crafts can be purchased.

Horse packing: Pack tours leave from Hualapai Hilltop. Rates are $50 one way, $80 round trip. You can also take a helicopter into the canyon for $55, one way. Both services require reservations and 50% deposits. For horse packing, call the Havasupai Tourist Enterprise at (520) 448-2121; for helicopter service, Air West, tel. (602) 516-2790.

For more information: Havasupai Tourist Enterprise, P.O. Box 10, Supai, AZ 86435; tel. (520) 448-2121.

Arizona Office of Tourism, 2702 N. 3rd St. Suite 4015, Phoenix, AZ 85004; tel. (602) 230-7733.