HAVASUPAI 2026! Our Havasu Canyon backpacking trip: Supai, Mooney Falls, Beaver Falls and more (aka: my bachelorette party)

I just want to start this post off with, like, a f*ckton of excited screaming.

I finally, finally, got Havasupai permits to hike down into Havasu Canyon and through the Village of Supai for the four-day, three-night waterfall-soaked backpacking trip of my dreams.

This was one of my bucket list hikes for so long, and I’m thrilled it finally happened!

If you’re on social media, I’m sure you’ve seen the stunning blue green terraced waterfalls and crystal clear terraced pools of the Havasupai reservation.

Supai is the second-most remote town in the United States — the first in the lower 48 — and is only accessible by foot, mule or helicopter. It’s the city center of the Havasupai Tribe, which owns all the land in Havasu Canyon.

Permits are expensive (about $530 each) and are so coveted, they typically sell out within minutes the day they go on sale each February.

My Peace Corps bestie Danae had the idea of booking the hike for a time when she was in Arizona for our wedding since it’s been on her bucket list as well, and a bunch of us were immediately down. I jokingly started calling it my “birthchelorette,” since the mid-October trip aligned with my birthday, and it kind of ended up becoming my bachelorette party of sorts.

There are a million resources for hiking Havasupai on the internet and there are only so many things to do down there so I won’t build you an itinerary or anything, but I just wanted to share a few photos and stories from my weekend.

I imagine our trip was fairly similar to most. The six of us arrived in Peach Springs the day before our hike and stayed the night at the Grand Canyon Caverns Inn, where we were able to check in for our trip.

Jenni had booked us the Grand Canyon cabin, where we shared two full beds and a futon. We had dinner at the inn’s restaurant and then went to sleep early(ish) to prepare for our hike.

We woke up at 5 a.m. on the day of our hike, packed our bags, checked out of our room, grabbed breakfast at the hotel (peanut butter toast and hard boiled eggs) and then made the hour-long drive to the trailhead.

We didn’t get quite as early of a start on our hike as I would have liked, so we ended up parked about half a mile back from Hualapai Hilltop, which is where the Havasupai Trail trailhead is located.

A quick side-note: My Ukrainian host mom, Natasha, made me a few garters as a wedding gift. She told me to give the ones I didn’t want to some of the girls at my bachelorette party, so a few of us took a cute photo at the trailhead to send to her.

We skipped the helicopter, the lodge, the mules, etc., and carried all our things down into the canyon. The first mile or so was switchbacks down 1,000 feet into the canyon. The next mile was a gradual slope downhill, and then the next six or so miles were a flat trudge through a gravely wash.

One of the girls twisted her ankle at the bottom of the switchbacks, so we had a pretty slow descent into Supai. She was OK! Her ankle was bruised and swollen and she was a little shaken up, but she felt confident enough to continue the hike down into the village, so we forged ahead.

Between that and constantly having to shift aside for the constant mule traffic, the downhill hike took quite a bit longer than I expected it would.

The trail itself is incredibly easy to follow. It’s well-traveled and well-populated. We saw a lot of other hikers heading in both directions, and plenty of signs to keep us on track.

After about seven miles of trail, we started to hear the water. As we inched along toward Supai, we started to see trickles, pools, streams, and finally, the crystal-clear irrigation channels that we knew would guide us into the village.

Because photos aren’t allowed in Supai (and because we’re not douchebags), our phones stayed tucked away as we journeyed past the village entrance sign.

We walked through houses and barns, past fences and corrals until we walked into the town center, which consists of a general store, post office, school, restaurant and lodge.

Once we made it through Supai, we continued our hike down to the campground.

From Supai down to the campground, it’s another roughly two miles, all downhill.

Finally, just before our last stretch to the campground, we rounded the corner to Havasu Falls.

Every hint of fatigue immediately faded away and I was brought to tears.

I should have prefaced this post by saying that photos absolutely do not do justice to the Supai area. It’s absolutely unreal.

We continued our journey down to the campground to unpack, set up camp and eat dinner.

A few miles before Supai, our group split into two, with a few of us hiking ahead so as to explore the campground and find a place for us to set up camp.

The girls that hiked up ahead found us a spot near the beginning of the campground, right next to Fern Spring, which was nice! The campground is bookended with raised composting vault toilets, so we weren’t too far from them. Our site was flat and clear with plenty of trees with which to string up paracord and carabiners as well as a picnic table.

A lot of times, campers will site-hop to better sites (typically those closer to the stream) as earlier reservations abandon their camps to hike out, which we considered doing.

However, we ended up staying at the site we set up at all three nights since we spent so little time at our campsite anyway.

Our first night was… interesting.

Some nearby campers ended up sick. Very, very sick.

A man at our neighboring site was profusely vomiting and dryheaving all night. We gave him some anti-nausea medication that Jenni had with her, but considering he immediately ralphed it back up, we imagine it wasn’t very effective.

We felt awful because we know he must have felt terrible.

The vomiting echoed off the canyon walls alllll throughout the night.

Jenni found out later from a Facebook group that he (and other members of his group) contracted Norovirus in the canyon. Yikes.

Regardless, we woke up early(ish) the next morning, had our breakfast, packed our day packs, and set out for the day.

Four of us decided to venture back up into Supai and explore some of the waterfalls in that direction, while two of us decided to set up hammocks and camp chairs near Havasu Falls to spend the day just relaxing and recovering.

I was part of the group that opted to hike up into Supai. We paused for photos at Havasu Falls (of course) and then walked the few miles south and uphill into the village.

We spent a few hours in the village shopping for local souvenirs, buying and writing postcards to send back home (they get stamped with a cool mule-themed stamp), snacking at the village restaurant and hanging out with the cute pups.

And, unfortunately for me, using the village WiFi for a touch to catch up on wedding planning for half an hour.

Then we wandered back downhill in search of more waterfalls north of Supai along Havasu Creek.

We trekked around the 50 Foot Falls, Navajo Falls and Hidden Falls areas.

Incoming: Waterfall pictures.

I think Hidden Falls was my favorite of that excursion, since nobody was around and we had the waterfall to ourselves for a bit.

Then we hiked back to our campsite to meet up with the two of us that had spent the day relaxing.

We had dinner, then went down to Havasu Falls to rinse off and play around in the water.

Incoming: More waterfall pics and maybe some thirst traps, in case you thought I was above that shit.

We were the only ones at Havasu Falls for the evening, which was really nice!

After splashing around for a bit, we went back to camp to dry off, change, drink hot chocolate and call it a night.

Now it’s time for our second interesting story of the trip.

While we were out and about for the day, we ended up with new camp neighbors to our south.

Unfortunately, we ended up next to a family of 30.

Yes. THIRTY.

It was… not an ideal experience, to be honest.

I didn’t realize it when we booked the trip, but apparently many Havasupai visitors rely on the mules, and the helicopters.

I was naive enough when I bought permits to think everyone was hiking and backpacking in, like we did.

Our new site neighbors had hauled in LITERAL SUITCASES of stuff. Massive sky lodge tents, grills, big screens. I kid you not, they had a blue tarp laid out with a dozen suitcases lined out on it.

They were also very, very loud and seemingly ignorant as to camp etiquette.

At one point they all started loudly singing, at which point Katie stood up and — in response — started on her own very loud ditty.

“My NECK, my BACK, lick my p—”

(You get the gist.)

We all cracked up laughing. Luckily, our neighbors did stop singing, and went to sleep (or at least into their tents with their iPads) at a reasonable hour.

We all went to sleep fairly early…

…and I slept like shit.

I kept waking up the the sounds of skittering, crunching, crackling.

When I finally got out of my tent in the morning, I realized why.

Despite all 30 suitcases, our site neighbors didn’t bother to pack a single rat sack or bear bag. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Our campsite was littered with snack wrappers and food packaging.

We rolled our eyes, laughed it off, ate our breakfasts, packed up our stuff, and began on our day’s excursion.

We opted to do Beaver Falls to Mooney Falls for the day. At the beginning of the trip, a few of us had talked about hiking to the confluence with the Colorado River, but given the sprained ankle and the limited time, we decided we’d rather just do the highlights this time around and save our energy for the next morning’s hike out.

We wandered over to Mooney Falls, which — again — stole my breath.

We made the hike down to the base of the falls, which can best be described as harrowing.

I switched out of my water shoes into my trail runners for the hike down, which leads through damp dark caves, and down slick steep ladders.

I wore a pair of gloves that I’d packed for the trip, which helped a lot.

But, um, again — worth it.

There weren’t too many people at the base of the falls, and honestly, Mooney Falls didn’t seem too great for swimming. The spray was thick and the base of the falls were pretty powerful. We saw a few people posing for photos in the falls, but nobody really swimming in the water in the same way we were able to enjoy Havasu Falls the night before.

However, they were absolutely stunning to stare at.

From Mooney Falls, we continued our hike on to Beaver Falls.

We stopped a lot along the way (the whole hike was maybe seven miles total?) from Mooney Falls to Beaver Falls and back.

There were a few water crossings, so we changed from our hiking boots into our water shoes for the majority of the hike.

The hike ran alongside Havasu Creek, which was (of course) gorgeous and otherworldly.

We stopped along the way to play in a series of waterfalls that was easily accessible.

We continued our very, very slow hike until we got to Beaver Falls.

Beaver Falls was, obviously, gorgeous. We hiked down to it, but decided not to play around in it since it was pretty packed, and we’d already spent a good amount of time splashing around in pools and streams.

We took our final photos, turned around, and hiked back to Mooney and then up and out to the campground.

If you continue hiking past Beaver Falls, the trail will take you out to the confluence. I do really, really want to go back and make that hike — it’s about a 18-mile hike from the village, round-trip — but for our trip this time around, Mooney to Beaver was perfect because it gave us ample time to play in the water and explore.

We made it back to our campsite where we all enjoyed one last meal together.

I’m an absolute slut for Farm to Summit’s backpacking meals. I’ve never had a bad one. I packed a few reliable meals for this trip as well as a few new ones, and this green chili mac and cheese was a fucking winner. Easily the best backpacking meal I’ve ever had.

After dinner, we packed up as much of our stuff as we could before going to sleep early so we could wake up early (4 a.m.!!!) to get a head start on our hike out of the canyon.

We made it up to Supai by sunrise, where we stopped for breakfast and a bathroom break. Then, we put our heads down and pounded out the rest of our hike through the wash and back up the incline and switchbacks.

Honestly, I’d been really nervous about the hike out. I usually hike mountains which means all the uphill effort comes first, and then you get to limp downhill to finish up the hike.

However… I actually really loved the hike out of Havasu Canyon. It was genuine fun (and not Type 2 Fun) and I wasn’t sore afterward. The switchbacks were definitely challenging, but also very doable.

We ended up hiking out in pairs, and once we were all back up at the trailhead, we had one last snack, packed up our cars, and went to go grab some food back in Flagstaff.

Honestly? A DREAM trip.

I can’t say it enough but I cannot wait to go back. I will definitely be doing this trip again in the future, whenever I can score permits next. Staying at the campground was an incredible experience.

I want to hike the confluence! I also want to explore more of the waterfalls I didn’t get a chance to see during our slow few days in the canyon.