Havasupai Falls Permit

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Note – the following information has been updated for the 2020 hiking season for Havasupai.

Havasupai Falls Permit

Havasupai is rapidly becoming one of the most sought after vacation destinations for hikers and adventure seekers alike.

Located in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, Havasupai and Havasu Falls are known for their famous waterfalls, scenic views, and camping spots that all run along Havasu Creek which is responsible for supplying water to Havasu Falls, Mooney Falls, and Beaver Falls.

Besides the natural beauty of the falls and campsites, the limited number of people allowed to trek down to Havasupai makes it a highly sought after and hard to capture the experience.

With only allowing 300 people a day, reservations to book a campsite at Havasupai is about the same as trying to lock down tickets to a playoff game; it’ll cost around $400 and they’re gone within an hour.

Making reservations is not only a game of luck but a game that needs to be prepared for in order to increase your odds of winning.

Information for 2020 from the official Havasupai website:

Details for 2020 from the official site:

ALL visits to Havasupai and Havasu Falls require a reservation made PRIOR to arrival.

There is only ONE name on a Campground Reservation – and a reservation is only valid if the person named on the reservation (the “Trip Leader”) is present at the Tourist Check-in Office in the Village of Supai (on the way to the Campground) with valid photo ID – otherwise, the reservation is NOT valid and will NOT be honored.

ALL visitors (even if they are not a Trip Leader) must have an account here on HavasupaiReservations.com made PRIOR to arrival so that they have confirmed their understanding of, and agreement with, Havasupai Rules and Laws.

ALL visitors must have proof of their account (a printout or screenshot of their Account Information Page), proof of their Campground Reservation (a printout or screenshot of the Campground Reservation that they are visiting under), and their photo ID available at all times while on Havasupai lands.

Step one – Making an account

This is the single easiest and least challenging part of this whole thing.

In order to reserve spots to Havasu Falls, you have to make an account with your:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email Address
• Phone Number
• Address
• City
• State/Province
• Zip/Postal Code
• Country

Once you enter all that in you’ll be prompted to add a payment method that can be done at the time of making your account or at a later date.

Do note that having your card information inserted before you try to grab tickets is crucial because it’ll save you precious seconds in the checkout process.

After you enter or skip the payment info, you will be shown a term and service agreement for the rules of the campsite and the falls. Part one is complete.

Step two – Making a Campground Reservation for Havasu Falls

This is the Black Friday step of the whole process.

You have to go in with a plan and be ready to execute it with precision or be able to adapt on the fly in order to compete with the thousands and thousands of other people trying to do the same thing.

Do note that you have exactly two minutes to complete the whole process or else your spot will be lost and you will have to start over.

First, you must enter the number of people in your group with a minimum of one person to a maximum of 12 people (this was the number for 2019 and at this time we do not know if the group limit has changed).

Once you have the number of people in your party selected, you smash that next button to get to the calendar page.

Here you will be able to select the dates that you planned for but be warned, you must always have back updates planned just in case your original dates are taken.

That very scenario happened this year to us where we had to fall back to a secondary date because the original dates we wanted literally vanished as we clicked on them.

As an added roadblock, the months are only shown two at a time so in order to get to the later months, you have to click past all of them.

The image below is from the 2019 process and we will update after February 1, 2020.

When your desired dates are selected you must then make sure your information is correct as well as enter in your payment method. If you have the payment method already entered in all you have to do is check everything else and hit I agree to the Terms and Conditions and Buy Reservation.

Once you have purchased the permits, you will receive an email notification with all the details confirming your purchase.

What To Do After You Get Permits

You have your tickets so what do you do now?

Start preparing.

If you can’t hike with 30-60 lbs on your back for 10 miles, then start training as soon as you can so that way once launch day comes, you’re ready.

Start buying gear so that you can sleep and hike with ease as you start a new day in the canyon.

If you need a packing list we will be releasing one this week to help guide you along your Havasu Falls Journey so be sure to check back in.

What To Do If You Don’t Get Permits

What do you do if you miss out on tickets during the rush? Fret not as they came up with a solution to that very problem.

If you miss out on tickets or want more for a bigger group, you can go to their transfer page where people trade dates or cancel trips and want to get their money back.

Here you can scroll through the dates available and buy ones that fit your schedule.

It is updated as permit holders release their permits back into the system. So if you don’t see a date you want, just check back in the next day to see if your luck is better then.

If you are looking to drop or transfer reservations, you will be refunded your campsite fee minus a 10% transfer fee.

Past that there’s not much to it.

Make sure your account is accurate and filled out, go in with a plan, go in with a contingency plan, be fast, and hope for the best. Once it’s all said and done, the hassle and stress is worth it 10 times over to go and experience a once in a lifetime opportunity for some people.

Tips and Tricks to Secure a Havasu Falls Spot

As stated earlier, having everything filled out ahead of time and going in with a plan will help increase your odds but there are also a couple more things you can do to help increase your odds.

If you have multiple people available in your group, use them to try and snag dates at the same time you do. Our group had three people on speakerphone with multiple computers going on different browsers at the same time trying to get permits.

Expect the website to lag or even crash during the opening minutes of registration. If you have multiple tabs open or multiple browsers, it’s best to try and make one work before trying a different one. If one tab or browser freezes, hit refresh and move onto the next one while the previous tab is trying to refresh.

Keep doing this until one sticks and allows you to move through the steps. If the website is taking more than 10 seconds to load the next step, I would move on to another tab while that one tries and check up on it as you tab or browser cycle.

Resources

Havasupaireservations.com

Havasupai Reservations Transfer Page

Havasupai Falls Permit