Postscript to "Beaver Falls Is In Grand Canyon National Park"

There has been a response to my posts on Beaver Falls.

In "Outside Magazine Online", July 5, there is an article entitled "Sacred Native American Sites Are Not Your Playgrounds" by Krista Langlois. It begins with three paragraphs, copied at the end of this post.

Without giving in to the temptations offered by the writer's errors, I want to state again the truth (not a fake), the legal, legislated, fact that:
Beaver Falls and the land on either side are within Grand Canyon National Park.

The article says some river runners "circumvent" the Havasupai fee system by hiking up from the river. Given that river trips come from Lees Ferry, that is quite a circumvention. However, it is not, really, since river runners are within the Park from the Paria River to the Grand Wash Cliffs, including lower Havasu Creek (from the top of Beaver Falls) and the land adjoining it. Hikers to Beaver Falls up from the river do not owe any Havasupai fee since they are never on Havasupai land, never leave the Park.

The article links to my blog post (thank you very much), saying I am "disputing the park's boundary". Of course, I am really relating the Park's history, some of which seems to have slipped out of the institutional memory of the National Park Service, the Havasupai, and other involved parties. 

The rest of the article offers ways to reverence age-old attachments to the land, which those of us who are advocates of the National Park System, or just star-struck by this grand continent, can readily endorse.

Here is the article opening:

Deep in the Grand Canyon, on land that Havasupai Native Americans have called home for generations, is a place known as Beaver Falls. It’s an unimaginative name for an otherworldly landscape, where turquoise water tumbles over a series of terraces gouged into red desert walls. To legally reach the falls, you have to pay the Havasupai $140, hike ten miles to the tribe’s campground, then hike an additional four miles to the waterfall. The camping and hiking permits are one of the tribe’s few sources of revenue, and help ensure that Beaver Falls stays protected. 

Some Grand Canyon river runners, however, circumvent the permit system by hiking upstream from the river, without paying the Havasupai. In response, the Havasupai now station a ranger where their land meets National Park Service land, asking river runners to fork over $44 or else return to their rafts. 

It’s a fairly simple request, but some river runners are so upset they’ve begun circulating an obscure document disputing the park’s boundary, suggesting that rafters can freely hike to the falls despite the Havasupai's wishes.