Grand Canyon Journal - Saturday September 10 2005 - Day 8 - Havasu

River covered: Mile 152 to Mile 173.


The wind last night died down into a comfortable breeze. It cooled me off nice and I was able to sleep well before our early start. I had prepared my gear in advance so I was ready to go quickly. Gee, do you think anyone could tell I was excited? We rolled out early and were the first raft to arrive Havasu. It was a treacherous parking job in the swift current, but we eventually got it all set up right. The hike was pretty easy as far as elevation gain, but we were traveling up a stream bed and had to walk over a lot of boulders. The route also took us through wild grapes and thorny bushes, and the end result was worth it. Hopefully the photographs will do it some justice.

Havasu Creek	Beaver Falls
Beaver Falls	Dad in pool at Beaver Falls

We played around in the pools for a while then we went on the AZRa “safari” portion of the hike. We started by traversing a couple logs until we reached a rock face with an underwater ledge, which we then traversed. It was only a 5.5-5.6 type of route but the excitement was high. After crossing the ledge we were able to toss our packs up to Rob, who had climbed across a gap and onto another ledge. From there, the non climbers hopped into the awesome pool we had reached, and a few of us climbed up to the ledge with Rob. Then it was a sweet 15’ plunge into the cool blue water below. A highlight of the trip for sure. I look forward to hiking down from the rim someday.

The wall we traversed	More traversing to get to the pool
View of pool from high above	Jacque jumping into pool
Brent jumping into pool

After we left Havasu, it was time to make some serious miles. We forged on as long as we could and it turned out that the campsite we were shooting for was pretty sucky at the low water levels we were having, so we pushed on a little farther. We soon found a new campsite a couple miles down the river. It was one that Rob hadn’t ever used before, and by the looks of it, not many (if any) other people had either.