Havasu Falls

The Havasupai have lived in and around this canyon for many generations, farming the fertile canyon floor in the warm months and moving up onto the plateau to hunt and gather in winter. Their name for themselves, Havasu Baaja, means people of the blue-green water, and the falls and creek are central to who they are. The village of Supai, tucked into the canyon below the rim, is home to a few hundred people and is one of the most isolated communities in the country, so remote that mail is still carried in and out by pack mule.

In the nineteenth century the tribe was confined to a small parcel of their canyon while much of their traditional plateau land was taken, and it was only in 1975 that a large portion of that land was returned to them by act of Congress. Today the Havasupai manage the falls themselves, welcome a limited number of visitors by permit, and ask that everyone treat the canyon as the living home and sacred place it is.

The extraordinary color of Havasu Creek comes from what is dissolved in it. The water flows up through layers of limestone and picks up a heavy load of calcium carbonate, the same mineral that makes up limestone and travertine. When that mineral-rich water reflects sunlight, it scatters the light in a way that gives the creek its striking blue-green cast, far more vivid than ordinary water.

That same mineral load builds the landscape. As the water tumbles and slows, it deposits the dissolved calcium carbonate as travertine, a pale rock that forms shelves, dams, and terraces along the creek. Those natural dams are what create the tiered, curving pools below Havasu Falls, and because travertine is always being laid down, the shape of the pools slowly changes over the years. The canyon is essentially building its own stone stairways, one thin layer of mineral at a time.

The oasis of Havasu Creek draws life into an otherwise dry canyon. Cottonwoods and willows line the water, and the greenery pulls in songbirds, hummingbirds, and canyon wrens whose falling song echoes off the walls. Bighorn sheep pick their way along the ledges above the creek, and mule deer come down to the water.

The pools and creek hold fish and frogs, and the surrounding red-rock country is home to lizards, ringtails, and rattlesnakes, so care with hands and feet matters here as anywhere in the canyon. Overhead, ravens and the occasional raptor ride the updrafts along the cliffs, and the mix of desert and water makes the canyon far richer in life than its bare red walls first suggest.

Spring and fall are the best times to make the trip, with warm but bearable temperatures for the long hike in and out and comfortable water for swimming. These shoulder seasons avoid the worst of both the summer heat and the winter cold.

Summer down in the canyon is very hot, and the strenuous hike in full sun becomes genuinely demanding, though the cool pools are a welcome reward. Late summer is also monsoon season, when sudden storms can send dangerous flash floods roaring through the narrow canyon, so weather awareness is essential. Winter is cold and quiet, the water too chilly for most swimmers, and the canyon at its most solitary.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.