I normally don't blog, but this trip was totally awesome and deserves a post. In August, my brother in law invited me to go on a guy's trip to Havasupai, AZ. Havasupai is an Indian reservation in the bottom of the Grand Canyon that can only be reached by hiking, helicopter, or by mule train. After work on Wednesday night I picked up my brother in law Brad, his brother Josh, his dad Lynn and his brother in law Ben. We drove through the night, nearly hitting a 6 point buck deer, a 5 point buck deer and two cows. Luckily, we made it alive and all in one piece. However, none of us slept through the night and had been awake for at least 24 hours. This was not the smartest thing to do right before you begin a 12 mile hike. Can you tell we are tired already?
The hike in was pretty easy, because it was all down hill. That meant the only hard part would be to hike out, because it was going to be all up hill. As you can see, the switch backs coming out would be brutal.
Hiking in the bottom of the Grand Canyon was awesome, and made the time fly by. It took us about 4 hours to hike into the Indian reservation.
Here is the Indian reservation, about 10 miles into the hike.
Just after the Indian reservation you reach the first set of falls. This is Rock Falls, which is a new waterfall that was formed in August 2008, after a massive flash flood created it. This was my favorite water fall.
Right before you reach the campgrounds, you run into Havasupai Falls. This water fall is a sight to see. I would say it was probably about 100+ feet tall.
As soon as we reached the campground we put our bathing suits on and went swimming in the falls. It felt so good after the 12 mile hike.
Here is the campground. After swimming in the falls, we took a four hour nap. Once we woke up from our nap we realized it was going to rain, and our tent only came with a small screen to protect us from the rain. So Brad and I being the boy scouts that we are, ghetto rigged this tarp on the top of the tent and our hiking bags to protect us from the rain. My favorite part where the bungees I tied to the tree to allow for easy entrance into the tent.
The stick to hold up the back of the tent was also a nice addition.
The next morning we headed to Mooney Falls. This waterfall was named after a guy named Mooney who fell and died trying to get to the falls. Seeing this sign at the top of the falls made me a little nervous, then I looked over the edge and my legs got a little shaky when I saw it was about 200 feet to the bottom. I realized really quick that if I wasn't careful this waterfall was going to be called Mark's Falls.
The only way down was by climbing through a series of tunnels.
Then the scary part, going down the side of cliff by only holding onto a metal chain. As you can see it was pretty steep.
Here we are on the way out.
After we passed Mooney falls, we headed off to Beaver Falls. On the way, we ran into a rope swing . On youtube people where doing flips into the water, so we expected it to be deep. Brad jumped on the swing and went flying off into the river. To our amazement it was only three to four feet deep. I guess the flash flood filled this swimming hole with debris, but that didn't stop us from having a ton of fun.
This hike was awesome. We had to stop and soak in the beauty that God had created. After soaking in all of the scenery, we had to climb a 15 to 20 foot cliff using a rope to get to Beaver falls.
This is Beaver Falls. In this picture it does not look that impressive, but we jumped off the top part of the falls and it was about 15 to 20 feet tall.
The next morning we headed back to New Navajo Falls. It was cool to look at, but not much to
do at this waterfall. So we headed back to Rock Falls.
Now you know why this was my favorite waterfall. It was about 30 feet tall and was a ton of fun to jump off of. It took me about 5 minutes to get the guts to jump.
After playing at the falls, we packed up camp about 4:00 pm and started hiking out. We hiked out in about six hours. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, however the switch backs where pretty tough. On the way home we stopped at the Hoover Dam. The new bridge going up is quite impressive. If you are in the area, check it out at night.
Over three days we hiked about 41 miles. We were tired, but this trip was perfect. This was one of the coolest trips I have ever been on, and hope to do it again in the near future.
Kaden loved trick-or-treating! When the kids started coming, before he was dressed up, he wanted to follow them all over the neighborhood and took off down the sidewalk.
Yummy!
I told you he was excited. Had to check out our candy then carry a piece with him when we went out.
Playin' in the leaves. ]
For those of you who don't know Mark is an amazing pumpkin carver. He looks forward to Halloween to spend the day carving pumpkins. He spends the month of October deciding what he's going to carve. Here are his masterpieces.
Yummy!
I told you he was excited. Had to check out our candy then carry a piece with him when we went out.
Playin' in the leaves. ]
For those of you who don't know Mark is an amazing pumpkin carver. He looks forward to Halloween to spend the day carving pumpkins. He spends the month of October deciding what he's going to carve. Here are his masterpieces.
Kaden loves ice cream!
After the parade we did the slip and slide.
Don't worry, the kid in the water is alive.
