Topo Home Havasu Falls Album Guide
“How was it? Did
you get a lot of good photographs?”
“Sure, it was great; except I had to be flown out on the helicopter.”
“Oh”, inquired the concerned Ms. Trekker, “is your name going to be in the
paper?”
Heaven forbid that I should disgrace the family name by being rescued!
While signing up for my “lift” out of Supai, the Indian village in Havasu Canyon, I couldn’t avoid reflecting upon the shame of how badly my sister-in-law had kicked my stuffing. A few years ago, she and her husband led a group of Japanese exchange students down the same 10 mile trail and out again, carrying their own packs and without resorting to the humiliation of hiring the village air-borne taxi. A well intentioned Ms. Trekker charitably attempted to sooth my devastated ego by pointing out that my sister-in-law was twenty years younger than I am when she made the trip. That is not a relevant point; I just plain got whipped.
I am happy to report the Havaspai Tribal Council provides a variety of means for visitors to come and go with minimal risk of pain: For a fee, I could have sent my pack up to the hill-top by mule train while I walked out; or alternatively, I could have shipped it to the top of the hill on the helicopter, or I could have hired a horse and guide to ride out ($75, 2+ hours and saddle-sores), or I could fly out on the little Bell helicopter ($70, 10 minutes and no pain!). It was not a tough decision. By the same token, they provide the same choices for going down the village, but I had been too stubborn to consider anything other than packing in, how else could I take voluminous photos of the landscape along the trail?
And you don’t have to sleep on the ground when you arrive at the village; they have a lodge. I heard from my fellow departing passengers that at the lodge you get a room with a real bed and your own bathroom complete with a cold shower in the morning, all for a reasonable fee. But upon my arrival, the lodge was full so I was relegated to the campground. Arriving late, I found the campground also nearly full; the few remaining open spots being located within empty circles surrounding the “composting” johns. I selected a spot on the parameter of one of the circles (and hopefully, upwind).
Which brings me to some other observations. Being a remote village, the only mode of transportation is generally by horse or mule; all families seemed to have a number of horses in the small yards surrounding their homes. We have our transportation pollution, and they have theirs; I’m not sure whose lot is worse. Walking along the main trail through town initially provided a view back through time into the life of our rural, agrarian ancestors; oh brother, how their towns must have smelled! On the other hand, how could I be anything but delighted each time a group of village youngsters thundered past on horseback, reviving long forgotten memories of riding bareback with cousins on the family ranch more than a few decades ago.
Traveling through town, I was soon struck by the bizarre juxtaposition of finding small satellite dishes, telephone and power lines attached to many of the impoverished houses within this pre-industrial revolution, rustic scene. I didn’t go through the general store, but the café could have been out of any rural American town; iced drinks and swamp cooling accompanied an anglicized menu of native and Spanish dishes. I think the fire hydrants applied the coup-de-grace to my nostalgic reflections of days gone by; in truth, with the exception of transportation and asphalt, the village has most of the accruements of modern rural America.
And finally, we are visitors in their community, but we are not always welcome. Waiting for my lift in the town taxi I was regaled by the stories and adventures of my fellow travelers. One family has been coming back to the village each year for seven years. They related some of the incidents that had befallen them or their companions on past trips. There were two sad stories involving run-ins with very young native youths and we all unanimous agreed that most of the wranglers driving the mule-trains were unfriendly, more apt to acknowledge the presence of a rock than that of a white man. But not all encounters were negative.
As I approached town, beaten into a demoralized heap of fatigue by the weight of my pack, I heard riders coming down the trail behind me. The rule of trail (and common sense) says a hiker gives-way when meeting or being overtaken by a horse on the trail, so I stepped off the trail and found a rock to sit on while I waited for the young couple and their guide to pass. As the guide approached, I playfully stuck out my thumb, as a hitch-hiker would, and smiled with all my angelic charm. The guide laughed and stopped to talk briefly. After ascertaining that I was OK she encouraged me to carry-on as I was only 45 minutes away from the village; soon I learned she meant 45 minutes by horse, not by foot. Once in town, I signed in at the visitor center, paid my fees and then made a bee-line for the café to buy a coke. As I waited for my coke to be served, in walked a short native woman whose eyes immediately lit-up when she spotted me, saying, “Remember me, I passed you on the trail.” Of course I remembered her. We chatted briefly and then as she left she wished me well during my stay in the canyon. It would have been nice to have met her one more time before I left, so I could have told her how much I enjoyed my too short of a stay in her community.
Trekker