Havasupai Village Havasupai Hike

HavasuFalls.net Visitor Feedback:

The following feedback has been submitted by various havasufalls.net visitors that have visited the canyon and sent us feedback. We believe this feedback is useful for our readers. Please keep in mind the following feedback is not necessarily the opinion of havasufalls.net, but the opinion of the authors. If you have feedback to add or questions to ask, please email us at sewing ( at ) havasufalls.net

Feedback: Jim

We wanted to post a note before Christine's feedback. The Tribe would like you to see the canyons and falls. Please respect the fact that they live there and do not want to be treated like a tourist attraction. The following is a good point sent in by one of our site visitors.
I have not personally been to Havasu Falls (though I am going on Friday, and I will definitely write in after my experience! I can't wait!), so I cannot speak to the friendliness of the Supai tribe members. However, I do know that direct eye contact is considered rude by many Native Americans. So it is natural that they would avert their gaze from her as she tried to make eye contact. This may warrant some kind of "editor's note" to let people know this fundamental difference in Western and Native American cultures. Great website, by the way, and some good information I will be using this weekend.

Jim

Visitor Feedback: Chip & Christine

My family of three just returned from a three-night stay at the Havasu Lodge (August 23-26, 2005).  We had hiked in and arrived at the lobby around 1:30 p.m.  We had made our reservations in April for the lodge.

Before, I tell you my "negatives", I would first like to let everyone know what a positive experience we had at the various Havasu Falls.  They are spectacular and worth the effort to reach them!!!  It had been an ambition of mine for many years to see them and I would recommend anyone to have the experience of exploring this paradise.

As we hiked into the village, trying to find the lodge, we immediately noticed how much we felt like the outsiders.  None of the villagers would give us eye contact.  As we checked into the lobby, we continued to receive the same "cold shoulder" treatment.  Sharon was working the desk and was very curt and almost rude to us.  Anyhow, she managed to give us our one room key (the other had been lost) and offered no further information.  Any questions we asked were answered with almost abruptness. 

The lodge is run down but our room was generally clean.  At $125/night the room is lacking a lot.  The view out our window was that of a canyon wall but just below is the view of the laundry facilities and all the trash that seems to roam the village.  Our lower window had been "fixed" with 2x4's and not usable. 

The air conditioner is borderline adequate but very noisy.  One night we thought we would open the windows but found that thousands of gnats entered through the screen into our vanity area.  I would not recommend this. 

The curtains were broken and haphazardly hung.  The carpet is the thin construction carpet with no pad.  The beds were okay, not to hard.  Lighting is lacking as there were only two reading lights in the bed room area.  No lighting over dresser.  No pictures at all in the room.  Not even a coffee maker in the room.

Two lights surround the vanity mirror but one was burned out.  All towels were in the vanity area with only one towel bar in the shower area.  Additional hooks would had been nice in the shower area.  They did supply enough shampoo, soap, tissues, and toilet paper.  Toilet power was strong.

The vanity area and bathroom floor were 1' square tiles.  However, they did a poor job of finishing the edge where the tile met the carpet in the bedroom.  There was no carpet strip there so the tile edge is exposed to the possibility of tripping.  Also the carpet in the bedroom was not all tacked to the edge and some of it was fraying and coming away from the wall. 

We had maid service after the first night.  They brought fresh towels, emptied the trash, and they turned down the beds.  They took our bath mat and a new one was never replaced.  The latter days they did not turn down the beds.

In hindsight, I would had much rather put our money to camping and the excess use on the helicopter flight out.  By camping, you avoid interacting with the rude villagers.  We found a few who were courteous but the majority make it known they would rather not have to deal with you.  Also, we found the village to be dirty, a lot of trash and run down homes.  The horses and many village dogs have free roam of the dirt streets.  Therefore, watch where you step! 

We had hiked in and had planned to hike out but instead opted for the helicopter ride out.  It is a 4.5 minute flight at $85/person.  We were told they only fly on certain days and put out a sign up sheet around 8:30 a.m. for a first-come first-serve basis.  The sign-up sheet is located outside on a broken down desk next to a tree just across from the helicopter pad.  The flights don't actually start till about 10 a.m. 

Word of Warning!  It is not "truly" a first-come, first-serve basis!!!   We got signed up at 8:30 a.m. as third, fourth, and fifth on the list.  There is a second list for the natives and at that time, there were 6 signed up.  By 10 a.m. there were 26 natives signed up.  They service the natives first before the tourists, no matter when the tourists signed in.  We did not get on the flight till 11:30 a.m.  It would had been longer but I became friendly with the native who was in charge of picking the passengers. 

Hope this helps!

Christine

Visitor Feedback: Erik

Hello friend,
Thanks for the wonderful Havasu site. I wish that I would have read it more carefully before our trip this summer. (We went with some native americans from the area so we did not think to research a little on the hike, and we learned our lesson). We hiked in at night without problem in late July. However, on our hike out, the following night (we ran into some snags with the information our friends had given us on staying there) a nice evening quickly turned terrible as a storm brok loose while we were in the canyon. My wife and our friends made it out safely, but we were in great peril. Don't let anyone fool you. Hiking this area is extremely dangerous at night, especially during the monsoon season. We had to climb up the canyon wall because the water was rising so fast. (l would approximate that during the peak of the rain [it only rained for a half hour] the water rose at a rate of about a foot a minute, and as evidenced by canyon erosion the water can get 20-30 ft high [it did not reach us on our ledge, thank heavens, which was about 16-20 feeet up from the canyon floor, but it came too close for comfort). And the sides of the walls become literally waterfalls (we took a picture of one cascading over the canyon wall in front of us but it didn't turn out because it was so dark). I have told anyone that I can who may ever go there that the trail is extremely dangerous and under no conditions should be done at night, let alone at all in the monsoon season. The trail is literally the grand canyon's drainpipe and we found that out the hard way. Please adjust the statement on your site which reads:

• June/July/August over 95 degrees in the day and they have "monsoons" in July and August. Supposedly you can't hike at night because of the danger of flash flood in these months. You may also be asked (told) to move your camp to higher grounds because a flood is coming in 5 minutes. I have talked to someone who experienced this and they lost a few items in the brief flood.

I feel that the heat during the day was extremely intense and the danger for flood too high to risk at night at all in those seasons. If people leave in the very early morning, that may be their safest route. Honestly, you couldn't pay me to walk through that during the day or night in the monsoon season after what I saw. (Incidentally, while the canyon flooded all the waterfalls turned brown [some of our friends came up after us] but the campsites did not really flood). Imagine the fury in the canyon when the campsites actually flood!

Thanks! Eric

Visitor Feedback: John

I think it might be prudent to put some information on your website addressing security in the parking lot. If you could do it in a manner just to make visitors aware of the "seasonality" of security and to use common sense and put things in their trunks or out of sight when they park.

Thanks,
John

Great advice for any park. Thanks John.