When I first saw the photos of this place, I couldn’t believe it existed in Arizona. I grew up in the Phoenix area and never knew about some of the most beautiful natural wonders in Arizona. The Havasupai Reservation is home to part of the canyon system that the Grand Canyon belongs to. When I finally took the trip to the canyon, little did I know what a CRAZY adventure awaited me.

The trip to the falls is a grueling 10-mile hike into a canyon. My friends and I carried enormous packs on our backs filled with all the things we would need on our camping trip at the bottom of the canyon. It was long and hot and hard, but we all looked forward to the beautiful river and waterfalls that we knew we would eventually reach. After hours of hiking we glimpsed our first sight of the river. It was blue and refreshing, yet it was nothing compared to what lie ahead.

When we reached the first set of falls, we all wanted to drop our backpacks and jump in the river fully clothed. Due to mineral deposits, the water there is a dazzling aquamarine color. One of the falls drops 200 feet to the water below. After finding a campsite and getting the loads off our backs, we all raced to enjoy the water. Let me tell you, this place is really beautiful. The sparkling water runs over a series of terraces here and pours over the edge of a cliff there and all amidst the natural rock walls and green trees all around. We spent that day and all of the next day exploring, hiking, swimming, swinging from trees into the river and taking tons of photos.

Unfortunately, that evening, the first of the monsoon storms hit. I was concerned about this before we left, but since a few of the people I was with had been there a couple of times before, I took their word that it was fine. That evening, the river rose so quickly that when the camp was evacuated, it was already too late for us to cross the river and get to the village. I was worried but since we were on high ground, we were told by locals that we would be ok to stay there over night and head out in the morning.

And that’s what we did. The water was no longer its beautiful blue color but had run brown with dirt. We were glad that we had seen the falls before the storm and now it was time to go anyway. The hike out was once again long and hard, but seemed fine otherwise. A few in our group kept hiking on ahead of my boyfriend, my sister and me. The hike was hard on my sister and we tried to hang back with her. It started to drizzle a bit and we stopped to rest under an overhanging rock. Eventually we were totally separated from the rest of our group.

In spite of the drizzle, we carried on ahead. As we were walking we sensed that we were getting very close to the part of the trail that climbed the side of the cliff to our truck. Suddenly, I noticed that there didn’t seem to be any other footprints on the trail. Also, there was a lack of horse poop that had been present all along the trail up until now. I mentioned that we might have gone the wrong way as I stopped to photograph an ominous black tree that was charred from a previous lightening strike. None of us remembered that tree from before…

As we turned around to go back up the trail, which also happen to be an old riverbed, I decided to check a side trail off to our right. As I went up the trail a little to see what I could see, suddenly all I could see was water rushing toward me filling the whole riverbed. I ran out as fast as I could screaming…Run! Water!

I know, it’s getting LONG. If you want to read what happened next, see my next post.

Ok, so it was a FLASH FLOOD! I had no idea how flash floods happened/worked. All I knew was that there was a massive amount of water coming at me and two people I loved very dearly. Running out of the tributary it turned out I was in, I ran back on to the main trail/riverbed. Screaming like crazy (Water! Water! Oh my god!), I had no idea what to do next, except run. My boyfriend, thinking quickly, stopped me and boosted my sister and me up about 5 ft. onto what used to be the riverbank. As we climbed up, the entire area we had just been standing in quickly filled with rushing water. I felt relieved, until… I looked up the mountainside and saw more water flooding in every direction. We began to run toward higher land, as new rivers opened up on all sides of us.

Amazingly, we were still lugging our huge backpacks as the ground around us turned to mud. We ran up as high as we could until we knew that the only thing we could do was try to jump across one of the swift streams that had opened up to our left and right. My sister had already fallen in the mud a few times and my boyfriend told us we had to get rid of the bags. I hesitated a moment before I reluctantly took my pack off and threw it into the river. I am not sure exactly what happened next, but I think we all waded in a bit in order to attempt a jump to the other side. Meanwhile, there was the sound of a helicopter overhead.

The next thing I knew, I was being pulled down the river in the muddy water. I grabbed at the other side and I felt roots and plants as they tore away in my hands. I made a desperate lunge trying to throw myself at the opposite bank. Astonishingly, I felt myself roll up onto land. But when I got up, my sister and my boyfriend were nowhere to be seen. These were the scariest moments. A helicopter flew above, without seeming to notice me waving my arms wildly. I wasn’t sure what to do. There was another swift stream separating me from the higher ground. I ended up jumping that next stream in order to get to a point where I could see the area better. I still saw no one. Finally, I saw my boyfriend far away downstream and with 3 streams separating us.

I was waving my arms and screaming to see if he knew where my sister was. Eventually he pointed and I ran to look farther downstream. There was my sister sitting on a rock in the middle of the water – covered in blood. Although I was worried about my boyfriend, I ran to get as close as I could to my sister. She was ok. It turned out, the blood was from her knee and she had accidentally wiped it on her face and forehead. I tried to talk her over to where I was. She was able to come toward me, but then she was faced with jumping across more rushing water that separated us. The plan was that I would go downstream a bit and hold on to some bushes so that I could stick my lower body out into the river. This way, if she was taken down stream again she could grab onto me.

Fortunately, she was able to jump across and land on a bush. We were both on higher ground now. We looked for my boyfriend and finally saw him all the way on the other side of the small valley that was streaming with water. At least he was on higher ground. Eventually, he was able to go farther upstream and cross over so he could make his way over to us. As he ran toward me, I could see that the river had apparently pulled off not only his shorts, but his underwear too! I took off my shorts and handed them to him as he ran over to hug me. From this point, we could finally see the RIGHT trail - that we had missed turning onto by only a few minutes hike. It turns out, we just so happened to have gotten ourselves into the worst possible spot to be in during a flash flood. It turned out that my sister had broken her ankle. But at least we had made it to a safer area. And now we faced the task of hiking the rest of the way out of the canyon.