Havasupai: Boom Di Ada!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

WOW! What a weekend! We had a pretty uneventful drive until we got to the turn off to the hilltop, and then we saw 5 bull elk! The one we actually stopped and took a picture of was at least a 5 pointer! They were all huge and beautiful. We got to the top at 12:30ish and decided to try to catch some Z’s before starting the hike in. The mosquitoes were so loud and obnoxious we pulled our blankets over our heads and tried to sleep anyway. Clint had had a Monster to keep him awake while driving, and I was so excited to start that neither of us slept very well. Finally, at 3 we packed up and started down. We were worried about my knees hurting with all the jarring and the constant downward angle, but they actually felt great, our shoulders on the other hand… OWIE! We were a little worried about not having enough water on the way out, so we hid 2 liter bottles up under a rock overhang and hoped they would still be there when we came back through. I was wearing a headlamp and 2 bats kept circling me! They were eating all the bugs, but kept getting closer and closer to my hands! It was a little freaky! Most of the hike was really quiet, but about ¾ mile from the village, we started to hear a small trickle of water. We had to cross it at one point, but it was so small we just hopped over. After that, we took a rest on a HUGE rock. The hike in wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, we only had to take 3 breaks and averaged 2 mph. We made the 6 miles to the village in 3 hours and then had to wait until about 7:30 for the office to open. It was so funny, there were LDS kids EVERYWHERE! We ran into our best friend’s cousin (small world!) and his new wife. Once we got our passes, (the lady misread Clint’s handwriting, so we were Mr. and Mrs. Woody for the weekend!) we headed down to the campgrounds. This part of the hike was awful! 2 more miles of soft, soft sand all down, down hill! We crossed over 2 bridges, a cliff you could look down and see a small stream at the bottom, and the wall on the other side was rocks and trees, and water was pouring out of the trees down the rocks. It was so pretty! Then we passed a cemetery, Havasu Falls, a mule corral, and the porta potties. My brother Aaryn was there waiting for the new potties to be brought in by helicopter, “The potties from heaven”. We hugged him and journeyed on to the campgrounds to meet my sister Tawnya and her husband John.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

After setting up our tent and getting some breakfast, we hiked an additional mile and a half to Moody Falls and had to scale the cliff with the help of a chain secured to the cliff face. There were a few caves you had to crawl through too, and that was the only way up OR down so there were a few hold ups along the way (like a girl who got all the way down to the first ladder and then had a break down and wouldn’t go any further!). The pool wasn’t as big at this fall as at the other ones, so the water was a lot more choppy, and COLD! Everyone swam over to the actual fall, and I tried and then needed rescuing by John (I’m SO not a strong swimmer and I could NOT breathe in that cold water!) There were a few smaller pools and a fall with a rope swing we played on, but Tawnya’s hip was killing her so we hiked back to camp and played there for a while. There was a campsite that had 2 rope swings on opposite sides of the bank, and the boys took turns playing chicken! Aaryn developed what I lovingly deemed “fairy feet”, he would swing out on the water, and then “run” along the top… he seriously looked just like a fairy! Clint found a nickel, and threw it to me, but it landed in the water. So he dives down and FOUND IT! It was so funny!

Make a Smilebox photobook

Then we trekked over to the “wall”, a cliff along the creek you can climb and jump off, and there were 2 rope swings. We spent hours there! A group of guys joined us and added to the amusement. Clint started a competition by doing a back flip off one of the rope swings, and everyone got involved! He got on the smaller swing and flipped up so he was facing backwards with his feet up over his hands, and swung back and kissed me. I thought it was cute! There was a girl at that campsite who scaled the rocks with Clint and did a flip off with him. It was pretty cool! The rope swings were SO FUN! I ended up with blisters on my hands from playing on them so much (one burst and so that sucked, but Aaryn doctored me up with hand sanitizer and super glue)! And we all tried out our “fairy feet”! We were all pretty exhausted at that point, so we headed back to camp and crashed for the night. We, well, our packs got attacked by squirrels in the night and they feasted on my crackers and golden grahams! We set mousetraps for them, but somehow they were able to get the food without setting off the trap. Grr!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Saturday morning we hiked up to Navajo Falls. You have to hike down into that small river we saw on the way in, by the cliffs with the trees, and then go through a cave. Navajo was SO pretty! By far the most beautiful. We climbed up the cliff and jumped off the waterfall, well, the boys jumped off (Clint did a back flip and he and Aaryn dove off!) the high part of the fall, I jumped off the little part! It was still fun though! I was so impressed at how fearless the guys were. They climbed up the rocks like monkeys! Crazy boys! Then we hiked down to Havasu Falls. Andy and Michele had told us about a mine in a side canyon they had explored, so we found it, but had forgotten our headlamps, so didn’t go in as far as we would have liked. Once back to the falls, the boys swam over to the cliff and climbed up behind the waterfall and jumped out through the fall. The wind started to pick up and it started to rain, so after they all had a second turn, we packed up and headed back to camp. We waited out the rain and had a late lunch. A native came walking through the campgrounds telling everyone a flash flood was coming in an hour and to move all our camping gear to the higher areas. Clint and I were planning on hiking out that night, so we packed up all our stuff and moved Tawnya’s tent to the higher spot where ours was. Around 4, 2 more natives came running through saying it was coming quick and to be ready. The “flash flood” that came at that point was only about 6 inches of muddy water, so no one was really worried.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Clint and I started our hike out at 5 and when we reached Havasu Falls, we saw that the water was coming in from the side canyon we had explored the mine in earlier that day. We continued on and stopped to eat dinner and get bottled water in the village. At 6:30 we left the village and at 6:45 it started pouring on us. We found a tree and made a shelter with Clint’s tarp to wait out the storm. By 7 it was mainly just a drizzle so we packed up and headed out again. We kept hearing water rushing and so we kept a lookout for high ground in case a flash flood came at us. At 7:15 we came around a corner and out of some brush in time to look up and see a 6-inch wall of water charging toward us. We were at that huge rock we had rested at Friday morning on the hike in, so we ran to that and scrambled up on it. Clint got our camera out and took an awesome video of the water overtaking the rock and rushing past us to fill up the entire wash with knee-deep water, but you can only see it on our camera because it’s so dark. Aaryn is going to try and clean it up for us, so maybe we’ll post it later. Anyway, the water completely surrounded our rock and left us stranded for over an hour. Our rock was roughly 10 feet wide and 12 feet long, 2 feet tall at the bottom and about 6 or 7 feet tall at the top. The water was almost breaking over the bottom of the rock at its highest point! It was pretty steady for about 30 minutes, and then looked like it was maybe going down so Clint jumped off the back of the rock to some dry ground and made a marker at the water’s edge so we could measure what was going on. We really didn’t want to have to stay the night there, and were almost resigned to set up our tent and call it a night when about 15 minutes later we saw a bunch of bobbing headlamps coming upstream toward us. A group of 7 or so hikers had reached the trail when it was already under water and since half their group had left earlier in the day and were waiting for them, they figured they didn’t have much of a choice but to put on their water shoes and tough it out! After they made it around the bend ahead of us, we knew that if they could do it, so could we! We packed up and started back up the trail, jumping from rock to rock, sandbar to sandbar, climbing through holes and crannies that we really shouldn’t have been able to fit through, all the while with a prayer in our hearts and a Big and Rich song stuck in our heads (Boom Di Ada! Sky is fallin’! Boom Di Ada! Stars are callin’! Boom Di Ada Yada Yada-oo!). That small trickle of water we hopped over on the way in was now a HUGE rushing river that we had to very carefully navigate our way across, and instead of only being able to hear it about ¾ of a mile out from the village, we were still crossing and dodging it for probably an additional 3 miles. Insane! Clint kept hearing things off to the side of the trail and so when we came around a corner and saw two eyes glowing in the trail ahead of us, we had a good scare… that calf had a good laugh! We finally made it to the 2-mile marker, and knew the switchbacks were near. We reached the rock overhang and our water bottles were still there! It was a good thing cuz we were starting to run low and definitely needed it for the switchbacks. Those were killer!!! I thought I was doing so well at this whole hiking thing, but man alive! I wanted to fall over and cry! We took 3 breaks on those alone! At one point, some kids on the trail ahead of us started rolling rocks down the mountain, and we don’t know how high up they were but everyone on the trail at that point started cussing them out – they were very quiet after that! We had guessed it would take us 6 hours to reach the top from the village, and even with our 15-minute rain break and our hour plus flood break we still made it in 6 hours! We reached the top at 12:15 and I seriously almost cried for joy when I saw our car! We drove for about 30 minutes and then decided to crash on the side of the road. We pitched our tent and snuggled up for 4 hours off and on… there was a pack of coyotes off in the distance that kept howling and calling and waking us up. It was pretty creepy! We were back on the road by 6 and home by 2. That was the end of OUR adventure, but just the beginning of Tawnya, John and Aaryn’s…

A quick sum up of theirs: they woke up around 12:30 (just after we made it out safely) surrounded by water, and by the time they had packed up and started moving to higher ground they were in water about 3 feet deep. They were told to keep moving higher and higher and watched as the water kept rising to meet them. Finally they made it to the village and were told they would be air-evacuated out, but all the stranded people were brought to the village first, then they started to actual evacuation. After a few hours of waiting to be rescued, they were told to wait and the VILLAGERS were evacuated instead!! About 100 hikers were left STRANDED in the village, some with no food, no shoes, no gear, no clothes, no money… nothing, and the natives who all had homes, food, fridges, and knew the area were taken to safety. Bunch of CRAP if you ask me! And then the news reported it that they volunteered to stay, RIGHT! Anyway, they had to stay the night in the gym and weren’t rescued until Monday afternoon. While they were waiting they hiked back down to see the damage and were amazed at how different everything looks. Navajo Falls is gone. That river that was running at the edge of that cliff, now a HUGE raging river with a new water fall up stream from it (where flat ground used to be!). Those bridges we crossed, gone. All the places we played on the rope swings, under water. Havasu Falls now has about 10 times the amount of water flowing over it, and all the places we played in just a few days ago are all wiped out. We are so interested to go back and see how much is permanent damage and how much has really changed. My sister is writing up a detailed account of their experience and creating a blog to post it on. I’ll put the link here as soon as it’s up and running and I HIGHLY recommend checking it out and reading it because their story is far more exciting and scary than ours is!

All in all, it was a fun weekend. We got to swim, made some friends, ate lots of snacks and got some great exercise (25 miles total in 2 days!). We’re so glad that once again we were watched over and protected instead of left to drown in a series of flash floods! As far as we know, no one was killed or hurt too terribly, so thank heavens for that! It’s sad to realize that we are among the last people who will ever see Havasupai as it was, but are thankful we were able to enjoy it one last time.