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| Hiking | 17.10 Miles |
2,364 AEG |
| | Hiking | 17.10 Miles | 10 Hrs 8 Mns | | 1.75 mph |
| 2,364 ft AEG | 21 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | Havasupai Day 2 - hike to the Colorado River. The GPS receiver on my phone was having a hard time in the deep canyons and the track is pretty worthless, but the overall distance is close. My Garmin phone came up with a distance of 22.5 miles which I know is way too high.
Walk from campground to top of Mooney Falls is easy. Climb down Mooney is fun. You go down steep trail which leads through a couple of tunnels. Then there are chains and ladders to help the rest of the way down the steep and wet rock to the bottom. Mooney Falls is the largest waterfall in Havasupai and it's breathtaking. After spending an appropriate time taking pictures of the waterfall we continued down the trail. Soon the canyon opens up into a lush green valley covered with wild canyon grape vines. We soon got to the first river crossing. I had heard that there were multiple river crossings and that most were very shallow until near the end. The very first one got my shorts wet and I didn't worry about depth after that. None of them required swimming, but several of them were deep enough to keep my shorts wet for most of the day.
The trail climbs up via some janky ladders and gives a good view looking down on Beaver Falls. It's a long way down to Beaver and not worth the time if you're going all the way to the Colorado. The trail then heads steeply down to the creek. The last bit before getting to the bottom is very steep and was very challenging on the way back up later in the day. The next few miles to the river were pretty. You have to cross the river several more times, and there was strong flow at some of the currents making crossings very tricky. I stumbled once and had to put my hands down in the water, but luckily didn't get swept away.
Eventually we reached the confluence of the Havasu creek and the Colorado river. There were several large rafts and a bunch of people at the confluence. One of the people we spoke with said that they were about half way through a 28 day rafting trip. Some of the rafters hiked up towards Havasupai to see the falls. An extended rafting trip would be a blast. We waded in the Colorado and it was noticeably colder than the Havasu creek.
The trip back was a lot faster. We stopped many many times on the way down to take picture, but on the way back we just wanted to get there before the sun went down. The only tricky part was the climb up the steep cliff side before Beaver Falls. It started out with some easy steps up, then there were a couple of spots where you had to pull up to a ledge that was chest high and there were no good hand holds or foot holds. It turned out to be doable, but it's miles from anywhere and a fall there would be very very bad. But we all made it. There were some pre-built ladders at the top of the plateau that I'm guessing will be deployed to make that climb less dangerous in the future.
All in all it was a very scenic and beautiful hike. Very glad we did it. |
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