Havasupai Canyon, location of the stunning waterfall on the cover of the June/July issue of ADVENTURE, flash-flooded yesterday after heavy rains swept across northern Arizona and a small earthen dam burst upstream from the village of Supai. No injuries were reported, but nearly 300 visitors got heli-evacuated from the narrow tributary of the Grand Canyon.

Havasupai is a sketchy place to be in a storm. In 2001, just days after 9/11, I spent a sopping night in the canyon. My compadre Sinuhe Xavier and I slept at the trailhead on the rim of the chasm and, seeing nothing but blue skies in all directions, packed minimally.
Sinner had the good sense to throw in a bivvy; I placed my faith in a summer down bag and the stability of desert weather. I’m not sure I even had a tent in the truck. O, foolhardy me.

We hiked 11 miles into the canyon, past the village and its barking rez dogs, past nappy-looking ponies somnolent in clod pastures, and found our way to the blue-green waterfalls. Nothing quite prepares you for the sound of rushing water in the desert, especially in there, where it runs clear as glass. Improbable? More like inconceivable–but there it was. We walked rather cluelessly past the first falls, Navajo, not even knowing they existed, and made
our way to Havasu Falls, which drops 75 feet into a series of pools, then continued down canyon to Mooney Falls, which plunges 100 feet. These torrents are some of the most acclaimed in the world and no matter what you hear, it’s not hype–the Caribbean water, the orange-sherbert rock, the cold spray on a hot day…photos make you say wow, but being there takes away words.

Clouds rolled in an hour before sunset. We joked about rain, but then came the crack of thunder and there wasn’t much joking. Right as darkness fell, so did the rain, buckets of it, fire hoses, Hoover Dams’ worth. We huddled miserably beneath a picnic table, which seemed incongruously chained to a rock. Who would steal a picnic table 11 miles from the nearest road? Oh yeah…the creek. Sinuhe at least had his bivvy, I only had my down bag and a whimsically thin plastic poncho borrowed from another camper. There was no shelter, were no overhangs, and I lay there with a torrent of water running down my neck, watching the amazing lightning display and listening to Sinner describe the book he was reading, The Secret Knowledge of Water, which documents the shaping force of cataclysmic floods on the Southwest desert.

D’oh.

Well, the flood never came. The rain pounded for three hours, but by 11 the sky was clear, the stars scrubbed clean. My wet down was worthless in the 40-degree night and somehow I cadged Sinner’s bivvy from him. At least he had a dry bag. We woke late and when we did the creek had turned brown and sludgy like a frost-burned frappuccino. The campsites were empty, other visitors departing with the sun. We packed what little we had and somewhat sheepishly headed back up to the rim. Hey, the more the misery, the better the story, that’s what I kept telling myself.

Last spring, I went back to Havasupai for the first time since 2001, this time with my buddy Dave Cichan, a downhill mountain biker who like all Canadians hides his sick athletic skills behind a veneer of niceness and civility. Dave’s technically a dual citizen and thus can operate his new mountain bike shop in Sedona without fear of INS raids. Despite launching a business and being a relative newlywed, Dave still gets after it–we couldn’t get a camping permit and decided to go down and back in the same day, which ended up covering 30-plus miles. The photos you see here are from that trip. I’d tell you all about it, but the storm is a lot more entertaining. On my long day hike with Dave, I didn’t doing anything stupid, at least not the Dave pointed out. Of course, that just could have been the Canadian in him.

So, Havasupai flooded again. It does happen. Floods are what shape the desert. It’s not the steady dripdripdrip or persistent whisper of wind across rock. Yes, those play a role, but it’s the biggest storms that wield the sharpest knife. Thank goodness, no one was hurt in Sunday’s flood, nor was there damage to the village. The creek is running muddy right now and the campsites are empty or on their way to it, but by this weekend the water should running clear, magically, in that otherworldy green and blue. Make a point of going–it’s good to be at a loss for words.

Tagged as: environment, weather