Somewhere between 550,000 and 750,000 years ago, homo sapiens (the modern human) evolved. Around 200,000 years ago, spoken language appeared among humans. The agricultural revolution took place around 12,000 years ago. The first cities appeared around 9,000 years ago.
Written language emerged about 6,000 years ago, around the same time as the wheel. The gun was invented around 1,000 years ago; in the 13th century the printing press. In the past 150 years, humans have experienced the Industrial Revolution, the first human flight, transatlantic calls, the first atomic bomb, and particle accelerators.
In the last 30 years? The computer, the internet, the smartphone, social media, and artificial intelligence, creating a world that is more connected than ever. The growth of human technology over the course of our history hinges on exponential.
I’m sipping morning coffee and watching a bird outside. I’ve been trying to consume more meaningful media lately, after a long winter of spending a lot of time on social media. You know those limits you can put on how much time you spend on Instagram?
I set mine to one hour a day. I’ve been horrified at how quickly I reach it, how many hours I spend in the online world when the world I can touch and feel is right in front of me.
Trying to read and watch the birds, I set my phone on top of the fridge and walk away. It feels silly— do I not have the self-control to have my phone next to me but not check it?
I sit and read my article, and my eyes flicker to the top of the fridge; I am hyper conscious of my phone’s proximity to me. I keep reading the article and come across the line:
“Simply seeing a smartphone (not even using it) lowers working memory capacity and leads to decreased performance in cognitive tasks, due to the fact that part of the working memory resources are busy ignoring the phone” (Korte 2020).
I move my phone to a different room, and keep it there.
our brains on social media:
There are a few key psychological and neurological concepts/principles when it comes to understanding the foundation of how our brains interact with social media, and I outlined them first in an older essay, don’t pay Instagram.
To understand how social media effects us, we first need to understand:
Social media’s success hinges entirely on selling adspace to third-parties. There is no algorithm, rather a series of algorithms and mathematical processes used to calculate what content will keep people on the app the longest and sell the most adspace. The only goal of social media apps is to profit off its users.
To do this, apps like Instagram and TikTok use Variable Reinforcement schedule, the same technique used at casinos, to intermittently and randomly reward users for posting with likes and views, stimulating the dopamine reward pathways in your brain quite literally working to addict you to the apps. They do this knowingly, intentionally, and without meaningfully informing you. read about whistleblowers here,
Dunbar’s Number: human social networks are meant to contain about 150 individuals. Social media has rapidly expanded those networks beyond what our brains were meant to handle. We are not meant to be exposed to this many opinions. read people aren’t meant to talk this much, Ian Bogost, 2021.
Emotional and moralized content on social media is spread more quickly: in fact, 20% more quickly for each moral-emotional word. Content that provokes emotion, particularly negative emotions like rage or self-righteousness, keeps users on the app longer, thus selling more adspace.
Components of human brains exhibit high plasticity, especially at young ages; put simply, this means that our brains can actually change quite a bit based on environmental factors. Right now, due to the recency of social media there simply isn’t that much research on its long term effects on our brains. This is one of the best papers I’ve found detailing what we know and what we don’t.
image: searching for connection at a Minnesota dogsled race.
Welcome to Log Off: your brain on social media. In this section of Hello Stranger newsletter, I’m hoping to demystify what we know about the workings and intersection of social media and neuroscience, keep you up-to-date on neuroscience news as it relates to social media, and provide tools to help you set effective boundaries with social media.
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Here, you can expect semi-monthly well-researched articles detailing current news on social media as it relates to neuroscience, clear explanations of how our brain works with respect to social media, and overall, compelling reasons to log off and go for a walk.
interested in learning more about social media and the brain?
This isn’t a new topic to Hello Stranger newsletter, but in the future all social media & the brain topics will be in this section specifically. If you’d like to read some of my previous work on this topic, start here:
don’t pay instagram: a link-rich article on exactly how instagram profits off of users and knowingly ignores mental health concerns regarding the app and young adults
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Spring on the shore is gray and foggy and drizzly except when it’s not— the gray and wet North Shore spring is punctuated by these glorious, sunny days. We had a few of those this week.
one of those sunny, wonderful days from this week; looking forward to a lot more of this on Lake Superior this spring :)
I’m planning some backpacking trips for this summer! At the very least, I’m hoping to hit the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan. Best case, I’m hoping to do an SHT section this fall too. Planning your first backpacking trip? Here’s a beginner-friendly guide of practical advice!
If you’ve been here a while, you might remember that I worked as a barista at Cedar Coffee in Two Harbors last winter, thus beginning my strong preference for good coffee. This past fall, I was browsing hand grinders for coffee beans and came across VSSL, well out of my price range (which was $0). Now, I don’t usually do this, but I decided to shoot my shot and sent them an email with my Instagram handle basically saying “I am very broke but I would like a very nice hand grinder for camping and it would definitely appear on my Instagram throughout the summer!!!”, to which I expected no reply other than “lol peasant” but they SENT ME ONE!! And, I do have to say, a hand ground pour over of coffee beans that cost 25 for the bag, does taste and hit infinitely better than a normal drip coffee. Worth the groveling, for sure.
I am very, very excited for everything I have planned for the summer, but right now it feels like there’s a million things for me to do between now and the start of it all.
I’ll be guiding part time this summer with Lost Creek Adventures in Cornucopia! I got my start guiding in the Apostle Islands, and after the last two summers out west I’m really looking forward to being back in the islands. For me, there is really just no place that speaks to me like that teal water, the red sea caves, the sandy beaches, all of it. Planning to kayak this summer? Here’s everything you should bring with you!
left: bean & bear which will be closed this summer; right: one of the trails you should hike instead!!
One of my goals for the summer is to explore Wisconsin’s Driftless area, and maybe the Great River Road! Anything I absolutely must-see?👀
Another summer goal of mine is to get out of my comfort zone on my own terms! In the outdoors, something I really struggle with is pushing my comfort zone for me and only me— I so often feel a lot of pressure to do the gnarliest things because I work as a guide, or because a friend things I’d love it, and I have a really hard time separating what I want to do from what I think I should do. One thing I’m doing to get out of my comfort zone is hosting a women’s guided climbing weekend in Interstate State Park! Come learn to climb, meet other outdoorsy ladies, and support a guide owned and operated new small business (guides supporting guides!). I’ll be camping nearby Friday & Saturday nights, feel free to email me if you’re climbing and want to join the group!
Last week I shared my first audio essay in over a year. I asked how we feel about the audio essay format and the results were overwhelmingly pro-audio essays! (mostly from my mom but also like a few other people too). I’ll be integrating in more audio content over the course of the summer!
scenes from the region of the BWCA we'll be padding!
Remember the women’s Fall Boundary Waters Trip I’ve been working on putting together 👀? It’s live! This is a SUPER small group trip (max 7!) with two guides (me & another BWCA paddling guide), four days, two nights camping and one night at a lakeside bunkhouse with sauna access! Come learn about cold weather camping, how to read topo maps, canoe travel, and more 💕 (code MADDY24 for $50 off)
Good Links: events, articles, & more!
There are just three spots left on my August Apostle Islands women’s adventure, and six spots for the July dates! Come hang out with me and learn about my favorite sport in the world at my favorite place in the world, code MADDY24 for $50 off registration
Speaking of sea kayaking, if you’re looking to dive into the sport, check out the Freshwater Paddler Symposium June 28-30 in Cornucopia, WI! This event is beginner-friendly with nearby rental options for sea kayaking, and a great way to learn the sport from some of the best ACA Instructors in the Great Lakes. Should be a super fun event bringing together sea kayakers of all skill levels. I’m planning on trying to at least make the fish fry!
Twin Cities folks, got plans for next Sunday👀? Check out the Great Gear Up and Gather at St. Paul Brewing for an outdoor gear swap! (Registration required for trunk sale!)
I’ve been working on a master list of my favorite hiking trails in Michigan, with maps linked! I’ll be headed back this way this summer, both the LP and UP, and I’m stoked for some of the best hiking & swimming trails the States have to offer!
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Time is a strange thing, and the pandemic made us all realize that. The sense of time changed during the pandemic. Some days went by fast, others seem to last for weeks, and now we’re left saying “That was FOUR years ago?”.
I have lived in Wisconsin almost twenty years, but for most of those years I didn’t know about the Ice Age Trail. One day, I realized I had been on it extensively, mostly trail running.
First day hike at Lapham Peak State Park
I only started keeping track years later, as I realized that between my time in the Northern Kettle Moraine Forest, and several visits to Hartman Creek’s State Park and Devils’ Lake State Park, I had accumulated some significant mileage!
I started to more consistently and methodically think about hiking the whole Ice Age Trail, in segments, focusing on weekends, breaks, or afternoons off. Then the pandemic gave me more time generally, and more time to spend on the trail specifically. I was going to get serious about it.
Dells of Eau Claire segment
The Ice Age Trail is one of 11 National Scenic Trails. It is over a thousand miles long and entirely in Wisconsin, winding through the state from the Door County Peninsula to the border with Minnesota, north of Minneapolis, following the edge of the last glaciers from 12,000 years ago. It has yellow blazes, and goes through several State Parks and State Forests, but also towns, which helps thru-hikers restock on food and sometimes rest in a real bed.
When I ran or hiked the trail before the pandemic, I felt that it wasn’t worth driving over an hour to do a segment that was only a couple of miles long. I do many alone, meaning out and back to my car, doubling the distance, but still, some felt too short for me to invest time in them. I would drive a couple of hours for several segments I could do in a row, and sometimes made a weekend out of it by camping and doing even more segments in a day.
Greenbush Segment
Although the Ice Age Trail Alliance strives to build more trail, much of the Ice Age Trail involves road miles. Some areas have several sections of road between trail segments, and sometimes you’ll find short segments surrounded by 20 miles of road connectors on each side. I had avoided those, saving them for later, when they’d be longer.
Then, the pandemic hit and kept us home. After months of not being able to do much traveling, of working from home and staying in more than I liked, my mindset started to change. Suddenly, driving to do a short segment definitely seemed worth it.
I could listen to podcasts during the drive (“Backpacker Radio”, anyone?) and I could complete new segments, adding to my overall mileage. But also, and maybe most of all, I could get out of the house, in nature, breath in the fresh air, and feel the sun on my skin.
Point Beach Segment
Before the pandemic, as I started keeping track and seeking out new segments to hike, I had favored longer segments such as the 10-mile Point Beach Segment in Potawatomi State Park, the 7.5-mile Mecan River Segment, or the Southern Kettle Moraine Forest, which contains several segments uninterrupted by road connectors. I used to think I wouldn’t drive two hours to only spend two hours on trail, I always wanted more.
Post pandemic, I was ready to drive for shorter segments, and be content with them.
Iola Segment
I opened my Ice Age Trail guidebook, looked at segments in my area that I had skipped over before, and started planning. And I discovered several new short, very nice segments. In the summer of 2020, I hiked the following short segments: Cedar Lakes (2.8 miles), East Twin River (1.4 miles) & Mishicot (2.9 miles), John Muir (1.8 miles), Portage Canal (3 miles), Tisch Mills 2.6 miles) and Walla-Hi (2.3 miles).
One of my motivations for hiking the Ice Age Trail in the first place was to see more of Wisconsin, and so I did!
West Bend Segment
I have two favorites from this list: The John Muir segment, in Marquette County, which is a pleasant path around a lake and provides quite a bit of history about the man; and the Walla-Hi Segment, in Manitowoc County, which has beautiful sections in the woods and along a river.
I loved its rolling hills as well as its newly made stone staircase, which made me appreciate the work of the volunteers all that much more. (The Ice Age Trail is entirely maintained by volunteers, thanks volunteers!)
Western Terminus
These short segments were a delight to explore, and even as I did think to myself “I wish this were longer, it’s so pretty!” I also had to admit I was grateful for them, for the opportunity to be outside, for not being sick and being able to hike, for nature that was still around, still beautiful, still reliable.
At this point, I have hiked just over 300 miles, which is almost half of the “trail” sections of the Ice Age Trail. I’m still not in love with the road connectors and will favor real trail and nature for now. But one of the newest sections of blazed trail, as I write this, is the Gibbs Lake Segment. Old me would have saved it for… later, maybe, one day. New me, post-pandemic me, is planning a road trip to hike all 1.3 miles of it!
For more information on the Ice Age Trail, check out their website: https://www.iceagetrail.org
Born in France of Italian parents, Lea Cicchiello now lives in Wisconsin with her husband, where she shares her love of languages and cultures, professionally and personally. Her favorite activities include reading, hiking the Ice Age Trail, trail running, and kayaking, in her neighborhood and around the world. Follow her adventures on her Youtube channel or on Instagram @trailsandtravelswithlea.
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Last week I hopped in my car, drove three hours, hopped on a plane to Vegas and began what was ultimately a several thousand mile journey to the most beautiful waterfalls in the United States.
Up there with the Wave, the Enchantments, and the John Muir Trail, the trail to Havasu Falls in the Grand Canyon (known colloquially as “Havasupai”) is one of the most difficult hiking permits to land in the Untied States.
When Aubree, a person I knew through the internet only, was looking for someone to apply for permits with, I thought I’d throw my name into the ring. I’m a planner, the sort of person who exclusively does things that make sense. I work as an outdoor guide and writer, and pretty much all of my trips have been for work. I didn’t have a reason to go to the Grand Canyon, other than that I’ve never been, and I’ve always wanted to.
To be honest, after a quick search of the internet, I was pretty sure that we would not get permits, even with our late March dates in mind. After COVID shutdowns in 2020, 2023 was the first year the hike had reopened, and it seemed like many people who had been rescheduled were looking to go. We hopped on the February presale to book, and sure enough, were able to score permits for a weekend in March.
oh hey there! I’ve included a lot of images in this post because it was SO beautiful! That means you might have to click “load images” for optimal viewing experience. It may also appear as “view entire message”. Either way, you’ll want to click that!
Mooney Falls, Havasupai Reservation, Grand Canyon. Here you can see the soaking wet chains basically plunge down the cliff to the base of the falls. I made it a little farther than this, then tapped out and climbed back up to here.
My Grand Canyon love story started when I was little, reading National Geographic atlas’ and thinking about all the wonderful places I would go when I was big. I wanted to kayak with orcas (check), and live abroad (check), and see the Grand Canyon.
I live in Northern Minnesota now, where it’s cold most of the winter. I had been to desert once, as a kid, all hazy memories but mostly I remember the big tall cactuses and a zoo or something maybe, and that my Grandparents lawn was full of rocks. So last week I hopped on a flight to Vegas to meet up with an internet stranger.
Fun fact! Upon meeting each other at the airport we both promptly had to call our mothers to let them know we were not being murdered; even though we had facetimed several times before heading out and both have pretty involved social media presences, they were both not convinced. We thought that was pretty funny! Next time we’ll just have the moms exchange numbers in advance. Also hi mom, love you.
said internet stranger now good friend on the hike into the canyon
It’s hot in the Valley of Fire, our first stop on the way to the Canyon. At pushing 80 F, I think it’s probably hotter than I felt all summer out guiding on the Pacific, and maybe even the summer before that. We talk and hike over sand and red hills, trail full of families and dads with big cameras.
I’ve always liked that about popular places— it reminds me of when my family of six went to visit my Grandparents in Florida and went to see the manatees and Grandpa video taped the whole thing. My sister and I hung our heads over the spring watching the manatees carefully.
In Valley of Fire, two kids run down a hill, yelling. While today I most often seek out quiet trails, it was on trails like this one full of families that I got my first taste for adventure.
We don’t hike far, just enough to move our legs after our early morning flights. We drive three more hours then check into a motel not far from the trailhead, grab dinner and repack our backpacking bags; we’re hoping for an early morning. I am shocked by how cold it is at night when the daytime felt like the peak of summer.
photographing tourists in the distance enjoying Valley of Fire
The check-in point for the Havasu Falls Trail is still about an hours drive from the actual trailhead and we check in at 8am before driving towards the canyon. Blue skies and rolling hills with cows as we drive towards the canyon. There’s a second checkpoint on the road in to make sure you’ve got your permits and you’re not transporting alcohol; alcohol is not allowed on the Havasupai Reservation.
I’ve heard stories of people being asked to unpack their bags and having their cars searched for alcohol; you’re on sovereign land on a reservation and different rules apply. Aubree and I are apparently not suspicious with our relatively small backpacking bags— which is fair. We’re not carrying any more weight than we absolutely have to.
We park on the rim and begin our hike down around 10 am, later than most people we figured. The trail begins with switchbacks down the canyon for the first mile. We leap out of the way for the mules, transporting supplies for the town and tourist bags for the people who didn’t want to carry a pack down into the canyon.
hiking down toward the falls looked a lot like this!
All said and done, the Havasu Falls Trail is a 10-mile hike one-way into the canyon to reach the campground. The way down is all decline with no relief. The hike back up, the opposite. All said in done, most people hike close to 30 or so miles in a long weekend at the falls.
Their are five or so major waterfalls along the trail— Fifty Foot Falls and Lower Navajo Falls you encounter pretty quickly after reaching Supai (the town), and then Havasu Falls, the most photographed, is before the campground, followed by Mooney Falls. Beaver Falls is another 2.5 mile hike beyond Mooney, and involves the sketchiest cliff hike I’ve ever seen in my life, so we did not do that one!
The most interesting part of the Havasu Falls Trail, and the reason for the complex and expensive permitting process, is that the entirety of the hike is not actually located in Grand Canyon National Park, rather on the Havasupai Reservation.
The Havasupai people have lived in the Grand Canyon for over 1,000 years. For hundreds of years, the Havasupai, meaning “people of the blue green water”, utilized the entirety of the Grand Canyon. They spent summers in the canyon tending gardens, and winters on the Colorado Plateau hunting. In the 1920s, the Havasupai were forcibly removed from the Canyon by the National Parks Service and confined to Havasu Canyon and the village of Supai. Havasu Falls and the area between Havasu and Mooney Falls were taken for the National Parks Service, leaving the Havasupai with limited access to a sacred space once used for cremations.
It wasn’t until 1975 that the Falls area and a significant amount of land was returned to the Tribe with the stipulation that the area remain open to tourism. Not that the Havasupai had much choice anyhow— cut off from traditional hunting and farming land as well as spiritual areas, turning to tourism likely felt like the only option. It’s easy to imagine the complicated feelings towards tourists that would arise.
Still it wasn’t until 2023 that “Indian Gardens”, a popular destination in the Grand Canyon National Park and a traditional Havasupai farming area, was rechristened to Havasupai Gardens or “Ha’a Gyoh”.
Today in the village of Supai, eight miles deep into the canyon with a population around 500, tourism is the biggest source of income. The extremely competitive permits to hike to the fabled blue green waterfalls run at $455 a person in 2024.
the hike in
The hike into the canyon feels like hiking through time, because it is. You start at the newest layer of rock, Coconino Sandstone and hike down, each new sandstone marking an older era. Eventually you reach the layer with limestone deposits, which is where Havasu Creek begins.
Downward we hike, white rock becoming deep red canyon walls, bright green trees springing up in the dried streambeds, until we reach the first glimpse of teal blue water, a stark contrast to the desert orange and reds all around.
It’s soon after that that we reach the town of Supai. Out of respect for the locals, photos of Supai are not allowed, and so I have none.
The are no roads to Supai; just an 8-mile path through the canyon or a helicopter that flies in an out a few times a day. All around you is red canyon wall, except where the creek has turned everything green and alive. Each house has a plot of garden and trees, satellite dishes and many have fresh paint. Contrary to the reports of the village I had read online, it looks lovely. Sure, there are broken things in places, just like anywhere else, but at eight miles deep in the Grand Canyon I imagine the cost of fixing things is a little higher than in a suburb.
Two smiling kids call at us from their yard in unison “Welcome to Supai! We hope you enjoy your stay!”. From a porch, their mother laughs and shakes her head.
There’s something in the air, the feeling of spring in the desert, the fresh green on trees, the red rock, a village tucked around a river with beautiful gardens outside their homes that reminds me viscerally of Armenia. Earlier I said I had never been to the desert except as a child, but that’s a lie.
From March 2019-2020, I lived and worked in a small town in the Armenian desert, co-teaching English to 2-7th grade. I’m not sure if it was that the gardens were growing just like my host families did, or the red rock and dry air, or the way the kids giggled at us and the feeling of being a young blonde foreigner, or just that it was spring in a desert the same way it was when I was sent back to the US on about a day’s notice, but eight miles in I couldn’t shake the heavy reminders that I haven’t yet been back to Armenia, and now it’s been four years. It’s well past time.
in lieu of images of Supai, here are some of Meghri, a town at the southernmost border of Armenia that in a lot of ways (though much larger and with concrete Soviet influence) reminded me of Supai
It’s around this point, the village of Supai and the 8-mile mark that we both start to feel the physical impacts of having hopped on a backpacking trip in the desert with no training. Even though I don’t feel much older than I was when I left Armenia, I’m 28 now and my body doesn’t just magically bounce into shape like it used to.
We make it to the campground feeling physically wrecked— one thing about backpacking is that the downhill, especially continuous downhill, is that it’s hard on your body. We make camp, and spend the evening and next day recovering and playing in waterfalls.
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Havasu Falls, Grand Canyon!!
With the 2024 Havasupai permit price hikes, the question on everyone’s minds seems to be “is the permit cost of Havasupai worth the hike?”.
And I think that’s a hard question to answer.
For me, flying out from the Midwest, the permit, a rental car, a hotel on either end, food, and then two days exploring the area around Vegas to make for a full one-week of travel came to about $1800 even (this figures in the costs split with Aubree like hotels and gas). You could do it for cheaper with a bigger group to split costs further and going directly to and from the airport on either end or flying a budget airline (a little more difficult with a backpacking bag), but I’m 28 now and not sleeping on an airport floor if I can avoid it.
In a way, the $455 permit is worth it simply because that is what it costs for an Indigenous community living in the Grand Canyon to be able to support tourism on this scale.
That said, almost $2000 is a lot more than I spend on the typical backpacking trip. (I might be a bad example because I usually make money on trips like this guiding, but still). I’ll be backpacking the Porcupine Mountains this summer and the total permit cost for four days was just over $60. My backpacking trips on the Superior Hiking Trail have been basically free, with no permits and just grabbing gear I already own and food we have leftover.
The iconic view of Havasu Falls as you begin the descent to the campground
The falls are incredible. The campground is crowded— this is a destination and an experience, not really a wilderness hike. The feel is more pilgrimage, less navigating the wild. Even though the temperature hovered in the high 60s, we were able to comfortably swim. The hike itself is beautiful.
And I do think I would do it again— it’s such a unique experience that I actually do think the cost is worth it, both in that it supports a really unique community and in that the experience itself of the difficult hike in and out to experience these Grand Canyon waterfalls is really unlike anything I’ve ever done before.
On our last day, the forecast promises snow. Though we could swim in the daytime, the nights were cold enough to use my zero degree sleeping bag. I wake up at 4:30am, well before my alarm and begin to pack down for the hike out.
If there’s one thing I love about time on trail, be it for guiding or for personal trips, it’s the mornings. I like to be up before everyone else, all of my gear fully packed, coffee on while light just then begins to filter into the sky.
We hit the trail at 6:20am, deeply worried about the difficulty of the 10 miles uphill, and hopeful to make it to the car by 1pm before the first line of snow squalls hit. The switchbacks and cliff section up to the parking lot isn’t particularly treacherous, but with the forecasted high winds and snow it would almost definitely be unpleasant.
We made it up to the parking lot just afternoon, averaging 26 minute miles, just as the first line of snow hit. In my opinion, the hike up was much easier than the hike in. We just took plenty of short breaks and trucked through it. The uphill hiking is harder mentally, but the downhill is physically grueling.
pictured above you can see a cell tower— that’s right! you get pretty decent service in the village of Supai. Wherever along the trail that tower is in your line of sight, you can get out a text to let your mom know you’re still alive. (You’re welcome mom!)
We spend the next day (gingerly, very sore) exploring the Red Rock Canyon area of Vegas, which exceeded all expectations, before we laid in bed for 12 hours straight then caught flights back from whence we came.
FAQs about backpacking Havasupai:
Okay this looks awesome! How do I get permits?
You can make reservations here! Permits are released in early February every year and sell out almost immediately. That said, you can check the cancellation and transfer board if you’re flexible, and you might be able to nab a permit that way.
How hard is the hike? Can I do it with kids?
The hike is definitely not easy. I work as an outdoor guide, have what I would consider to be moderate backpacking experience, and I did not train for the hike. I found the downhill section to be fairly difficult, but didn’t struggle with the uphill.
Overall, I would say that this is a doable hike for anyone who regularly hikes 6+ miles without training. If you come without out of backpacking shape, expect to be sore. I would say this is probably a bad hiking trip for most kids unless you regularly hike with your kids.
Note that people do arrange mule transport for their bags. There have been a lot of questions raised about the welfare of the mules— I am definitely not here to judge how the people living in Supai get their supplies, but I do encourage you to carry your own gear into the canyon. The mule pickup is still two miles from the campground, and the drop off for departures is at 7am. You are better off packing light and carrying your own gear planning wise.
Whatshould I pack for a trip like this? How much backpacking experience do I need?
You can definitely do this trip with little backpacking experience, so long as you research and prep for the right conditions. I would go so far as to say this is actually a really great trail for beginner backpackers because of the town store within walking distance, all of the support options available along the way (other hikers ect), a nearby local clinic, a developed campground, access to water, ect.
Remember to pack light. Because of the nature of the canyon, it’s extremely important to pack out everything you pack in.
When is the best time of year to backpack Havasupai?
April and May are the most popular months for backpacking Havasupai— after that it gets hot. Honestly even with the snow at the end I would say late March was pretty much perfect, and if I go again I’ll be doing it this time of year.
It was warm but not hot during the day, cold at night, and swimmable water temperatures. If you’re used to the warmer climate, May-June probably makes sense. If you, like me, are from the frozen north March feels like peak summer, sleet and all.
have your own adventure this summer!
Join me on a sea kayaking adventure in my favorite place in the world! My custom Apostle Islands women’s trips (which I am both guiding and teaching basic sea kayak skills on) still have some availability for both July & August! Code Maddy24 for $50 off.
Women’s guided rock climbing at Interstate State Park MN/WI is filling up June 8 and/or 9, but there’s still time to register! Feel free to reach out to me via email to join the group camping near by (girls trip vibes!!)
It’s good old mud season in Northern Minnesota, which means it’s time for a Leave No Trace reminder! Remember to hike through the mud and not around it as hiking around can widen the trail
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