1

The title should be just Havasupai but cant work out how to edit.

2

You will need to rent a car to get to the trailhead. How many days will you be in the USA before trekking into Havasupai Canyon? I don't think that it is so popular that you would need to make reservations months in advance. It may be quite hot at the time that you will be visiting.

3

It may be quite hot at the time that you are planning to visit. You will need a car to reach the trailhead. I don't believe that you need to make reservations months in advance.

4

There is information here about how to contact them by email for reservations.

There is a mailing address here which also gives more information about getting to the reservation and various fees.

5

Hello. It is an exceptionally beautiful place and worth the effort to get there.

You absolutely need reservations in advance. It took us one week with three people calling multiple days to get through and make a reservation for four months later. Perhaps you can use a skype account to keep trying to call through.

We flew to Phoenix, Arizona and took three rental cars up to a town to stay the night. It is about six hours driving from Phoenix or Las Vegas to the trailhead. We started hiking at 9AM. We should have started at 6AM. We are experienced hikers who regularly backpack in the Rockies. Two got heat stroke as it was exceptionally hot when we went in May.

We stayed two nights. This was a mistake after all the effort to get there. We hike in on Day 1; most of the group went on a long hike to further out falls on Day 2 (I relaxed and swam); on day 3 we began our hike at 5AM. We carried our backpacks in but we were the only group to do so. Everyone uses either the donkeys (they take your bags to campsite area) or helicopter (they drop your bags in the village about 1.5 miles away from camping).

Perfection would have been three nights. Then we could have hiked to other falls and had a day to just rest and enjoy the beauty and swim.

6

Sorry about the double post. Many times my posts are erased when I take too long to compose and edit them.

I backpacked into Havasupai Falls years ago in March, during college spring break. There was snow on the rim. We had just backpacked (full packs) down to Phantom Ranch in the Grand Canyon, and we carried full backpacks to Havasupai. I remember that the beginning of the hike into Havasupai is out in the open, with no shade. It was a long hike, as I recall, and it was dark when I finally arrived at the village -- I was lagging behind the others. I sat down on a log, and suddenly a cow nudged me with her head! It was pitch dark and no one else was around. That did give me enough adrenaline to scoot along the next 1.5 miles to the campground.

It is gorgeous -- turquoise waterfall and pool with bright red clay cliffs and ground. I did not attempt to hike further out to the overlook of the Colorado River and other waterfalls. We hiked back out the next morning.

7

You will want advance reservations, even if for nothing else besides your peace of mind. They're spotty at best about taking reservations and I've never heard of the Havasupai to refuse a walk-in visitor with cash in hand (for a while they had a separate, higher price for walk-ins - I can't tell if that policy is still in effect). I've been told on the phone that the campground was all booked up for the first week of January, which seemed improbable, so we went anyway and found the place dead-empty. I've had reservations in April, and arrived to find the place overflowing, with more folks piling in and populating pretty much every remotely habitable spot in the campground. This was all over a decade ago, so practices may have changed (but I wouldn't bet my paycheck on it).

The hike itself is straighforward, uneventful, and mostly unremarkable, until you get to the falls. Lots of tiresome trudging in soft sand, and after the initial descent from the rim there isn't a whole lot to look at until you get to the falls. If not for the destination, the hike would have little to recommend it (the hikes farther east in Grand Canyon National Park are far more spectacular than these 10 fairly tedious miles to Havasupai). The real highlight, besides the falls (obviously), is continuing down the canyon toward the Colorado River. This is truly a special, and spectacular, hike, and not to be missed.

8

Thanks everyone for the help and advice, especially the e mail link for booking the campsite, which looks much more doable than spending a week on the phone! Has anyone booked a campsite there by e mail? Also do you have to book space on a mule to carry a pack, not a person, in advance? One more query for now - is it possible to camp in a tent at the trailhead to facilitate an early start ?