Amy B Wang

The Republic | azcentral.com

To glimpse the otherworldly aquamarine waters of the Havasupai waterfalls, one must reach the trailhead at Hualapai Hilltop, some 260 miles north of Phoenix. From there, it’s a eight-mile hike down into Havasu Canyon, through an array of switchbacks, and another 2 miles past the remote village of Supai. The journey back up the canyon proves more difficult; the switchbacks seem to double in length on the ascent, as ascending switchbacks do.

But the most challenging part of seeing the falls? To hear many hikers tell it, it’s obtaining a permit to visit in the first place.

2017 UPDATE: Havasupai hiking permits now available online

Once a little-known getaway for the likes of Arizona families and regional Boy Scout troops, the Havasupai waterfalls have in recent years become a tourist destination of international fame.

With that popularity comes a price: It’s growing increasingly difficult — some say impossible — for the average local hiker to enjoy the falls on a whim, for a low price or at all. Some say the falls are joining the likes of rafting tours down the Grand Canyon, hikes through The Wave or weekend afternoons at Fossil Creek, Arizona getaways that require a lot of planning and maybe a little luck to enjoy.

The actual process of getting a permit is not complicated. The waterfalls are on the Havasupai Indian Reservation, managed by the Havasupai tribe. Single-day, out-and-back trips are not allowed, so those visiting must reserve spots with the tribe’s camping office. There are 300 permits issued per day, according to the manager of the camping office, who did not want to be named.

The office operates a handful of phone lines that open at the beginning of each season, Feb. 1. Would-be visitors call one of those numbers, check availability for their dates and pay a small fee: $62.71 per person for one night of camping, $81.41 per person for two nights.

How difficult could it be?

In January, Ty Villiborghi was planning an annual camping trip with a dozen friends. They had chosen Havasupai as their destination for 2016. Villiborghi, who grew up in Arizona, had been to the falls several times and remembered it as a beautiful, if low-key, place to visit.

“My high school hiking club did trips there every year,” Villiborghi said. “It was our big annual trip.”

After college, he visited the falls twice more, each time planning the camping excursions on his own. Now, he was eager to show it to his friends who had never been. How difficult could it be to book a spot by phone if he was prepared, he wondered.

Villiborghi was mildly aware that the Havasupai waterfalls had become more popular since his last visit, about 10 years ago. The group devised a plan: When the phone lines opened Feb. 1, they would each try calling. Whoever got through first would book the camping permits for their entire group.

On the first day alone, Villiborghi dialed dozens, if not hundreds, of times. Always a busy signal.

By the end of the first day, online travel forums dedicated to Havasupai falls said the permits had been booked solid from peak season all the way up to the first of April, Villiborghi said.

"Over the span of the week, I had 15 hours with the headset next to my head pressing redial,” he said.

The following week, Villiborghi estimates he and his friends attempted calling for another collective five hours. He attempted the line so many times, he began to recognize the different types of ring tones and busy signals he would hear. There was the ring that abruptly cut you off, the one that transitioned into a busy signal, the ring that was solid and one that was more static-filled.

No one in their group ever got through.

“We entirely gave up and rescheduled and decided to go somewhere else,” Villiborghi said.

'Completely mind-blowing'

To understand the appeal of the Havasupai falls, one only has to see a photo of their dramatic waters plunging into startlingly turquoise-colored travertine pools. On travel sites and message boards, the words “bucket list” often appear in people's reviews of the falls. The waters even gave the people who live in the Canyon their name: Havasupai translates to "people of the blue green water," according to the tribe.

“People that haven’t seen it, it’s one of those things that you really should see,” Villiborghi said. “For the most part, they're not an exaggeration of what it actually appears like. It really is that breathtaking in person. The color of that water is phenomenal. The temperature and the air in that Canyon: It's clean, it’s crisp, it's comforting. It's adventure.”

Scott Cundy estimates he has been to the falls 35 to 40 times but can still remember seeing them anew.

"It's completely mind-blowing, especially the first time you go down," said Cundy, a co-owner of the Wildland Trekking Co., an outfitter that has organized camping trips to the Havasupai falls for the past 10 years. "It's not just the waterfalls. The creek itself and the valley it flows through — I would say it's one of the most beautiful canyons in the world."

Trips booked through Wildland Trekking Co. include a guide, most of the camping gear, all meals and pack mules to carry said gear — and a guaranteed entry permit, of course. Flying in or out on a helicopter is an additional, separate fee to a third-party helicopter company that gives priority to Havasupai tribal members, Cundy said. These amenities don't come for free. Wildland Trekking's guided Havasupai trips run $930 to $1,385 per person.

Those prices are comparable to other outfitters' packages. A survey of a half-dozen Arizona outfitters shows that three- and four-day guided Havasupai camping trips range from around $800 to $1,500 per person.

Cundy said he has heard some speculate that the reason it’s so hard to get permits is because tour operators buy out entire blocks through some special phone line. He can understand their frustration, he said, but insists that is not the case.

"There's not (a different system)," Cundy said. "They don't treat us any differently from the public for the most part."

Clients wanting to go on a trip with Wildland Trekking usually reserve a spot through the company long before Feb. 1. Once the Havasupai phone lines open, the guides call the tribe and make their reservations for the upcoming season. What they will sometimes do, Cundy said, is buy extra permits to fill out a group. For example, If two people have made plans through Wildland Trekking to go to Havasupai falls on a certain weekend, Cundy might reserve 10 or so more permits for the same dates in order to fill out the size of the guided group.

"People book way in advance, and we plug that into the website. We only reserve dates that we have bookings for," Cundy said. "We go through the same process. We just do it all upfront. If you don't get in there early, which really means the first couple weeks of February, you're not going."

Only a small number of the 300 permits per night go to those who are "guided," said Brian Jump, director of multiday tours at Arizona Outback Adventures, an outfitter that in 1998 became one of the first companies to organize guided camping trips to the waterfalls. Today, its guides make 50 to 70 trips down to the falls per season.

Because of its longevity, AOA usually now arranges for permits with the tribe before the phone lines officially open, Jump said.

"We have a relationship with the tribe that is now onwards of 20 years," Jump said. "We essentially tell them the dates that we book at the beginning of the year and they allot a certain amount for us."

Still, they call the same phone numbers everyone else does to make those arrangements, he said.

"It's always been the same. You call the number down in Supai. And you call a million times to get in touch," Jump said. "Generally speaking, it's always been hard to get in touch with them. ... It seems like there's more people scooping up permits faster."

The manager of the camping office said the falls have become noticeably more popular. Spots fill up for the entire season within a few weeks, and booking requests from, say, Europe are not uncommon. She declined to comment further on the permitting process, deferring more detailed questions to the Havasupai Tribal Council. Calls to the council were not immediately returned.

Before there was Instagram

There is one thing everyone can agree with — including tour operators, the camping-office manager, people who have obtained permits and people who have been locked out: The Havasupai waterfalls have become phenomenally popular.

"We've noticed a massive jump over the last three years. I mean, exponential," Cundy said. "And this might seem kind of crazy, but I think Havasupai falls is on its way to being sort of on the scale of Machu Picchu. ... It's just known throughout the world."

It wasn't always this way. George Henry, a volunteer at the Phoenix Zoo, remembers hiking down Havasu Canyon in 1968, when he was a "rowdy college student" at Northern Arizona University.

"It was just one of those small dirt parking lots up on top," said Henry, now 68. "No permits. You hiked down there regular. There was like a $10 fee to walk through the Indian village."

It was a simple weekend trip with fellow classmates and Henry's then-girlfriend, he said. At the bottom, they hardly saw anyone else but spent a day marveling at the five waterfalls and swimming in their surrounding pools. He has not been back since but can still recall the vivid color of the water, almost 50 years later.

Henry's experience would be unimaginable at today's Havasupai falls.

"I'm telling you, it's just exploding. A lot of it is the internet," Cundy said. "Before, nobody knew about these places, and the only way you could find out was through a guidebook or talking to someone who lived there."

Brian Jump put it more succinctly: "There was no Instagram back then."

Now, a photo of any one of Havasupai's already photogenic waterfalls can go viral, catching the attention of someone halfway around the world.

"The image of the incredible waterfalls, it's definitely gotten more known, even locally, over the last decade," said AOA spokeswoman Annemarie Medrzycki. "Even in the last two years we've seen such a dramatic increase in interest and in discussion of it on the internet. I've seen it constantly on Instagram, photos of Havasupai."

Tour operators said they can almost always trace an increase in inquiries about Havasupai trips back to a recent travel article or blog post. In recent years, the waterfalls have been featured in national publications like National Geographic and Outside magazine. The destination received much attention in 2008 after a flash flood wreaked havoc on the Canyon. That year, tribal members spent 10 months repairing damage to the pools and trails and closed the campsite to those outside the tribe.

Since then, tourism at the falls has recovered fully and continued to rise.

"It's an international destination," Cundy said. "I don't see it stopping."

'Hamilton' tickets of the Southwest

A beleaguered, would-be visitor to the falls vented on TripAdvisor recently: “My group has taken turns calling every 10 mins maybe over 100 attempts over the past 4 days starting on Feb 1 from we have called every number we can find, from 9am-6pm. This is extremely upsetting. I have no idea how people can get through?”

That refrain is common online, as people share their frustration and disappointment in trying to obtain Havasupai camping permits, now the "Hamilton" tickets of the Southwest.

But if seeing the Havasupai falls truly is joining the ranks of other internationally known experiences in Arizona, the grueling process of gaining entry may be here to stay. Rafting down the Colorado River, staying overnight at Phantom Ranch Lodge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, or hiking The Wave all require planning months in advance — or just sheer lottery luck. Simple supply and demand dictate it.

Still, for those who despair, Phoenix resident Michael Bennett's story offers a glimmer of hope. In 2011, fresh from a breakup, Bennett wanted to organize a camping trip to Havasupai. He put out an open invitation among his friends.

"I was thinking I'd get five or so people and I ended up getting 70," he said.

After that, Bennett and his friends tried the same approach to calling for reservations: going all in.

"I had eight people calling all day for like three days," Bennett said. He was in the bathroom — the phone ringing incessantly on speakerphone — when someone on the other end picked up. Shocked, he leaped out of the shower and reserved permits for 70 people.

The trip that year felt like a gigantic convivial barbecue. Bennett's friends brought their own camping gear, but he packed in hundreds of pounds of food and other supplies.

"I lost a ton of money that year," he added, laughing.

The trip was so much fun that he did it again the following year, with 111 people. Since then, he has taken a large group every year and now does book out an entire weekend when he calls the tribe. This year, he made two trips down the Canyon, taking 125 people in late April and 300 people in mid-May. A professional massage therapist and yoga instructor accompanied them.

The annual Facebook event has taken on a life of its own, he said. This year alone, more than 20,000 people discovered it, all by word of mouth. Bennett charges $300 to $460 for those who go with his group, what he notes is a fraction of what tour operators charge. His trips have become so popular that he started a website, BGWild.com, to streamline the process slightly for 2017.

Bennett said he feels fortunate that, five years after he was frantically calling the phone lines for a permit, he has developed a good enough relationship with the Havasupai tribe to lead his own groups to the waterfalls. The iridescent blue beauty of the water there still amazes him, he said on a recent afternoon, showing off photos on his smart phone. And he loves the camaraderie and friendships that have developed out of his group excursions.

"It's great to be in a position where we can just do these trips for fun," Bennett wrote on his new website, "not because it's our full time job (it's not), but because we love being there, putting on a great event in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been."

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