Falling Waters

In case you haven't guessed, I escaped for a backpacking trip to Havasu Canyon. It's been 8 years since we last visited, and we were curious to see the changes since the the flash flood from last August.

The biggest difference occurred at and above Navajo Falls - Navajo Falls, unfortunately, is no longer (you can see what it looked like in its glory via the link above). During the course of the flood, the stream cut a new path, eating away at the relatively soft embankments to form two new waterfalls while abandoning the watercourse over the old Navajo falls. Unfortunately, we had some issues with our camera that went undiscovered until we got home, so many of our photos of the various falls did not turn out satisfactorily :(

Anyhow, this is Havasu Falls, no longer a dual split fall - all the water now flows out what was previously the right hand channel (looking at the falls). In addition to the change in waterflow, the travertine pools below the falls seem to have taken a hammering. Some work has been done to try to reconstruct the pools, and travertine is already starting to cover the man-made dams.

Mooney falls remains largely unchanged, with the exception of the silting up of the pool below the falls in addition to the loss of some of its travertine dams as well. Similarly to Havasu Falls, the tribe has installed some rock walls in the pool, to encourage the reformation of the terraced travertine.