This map (above) shows our overall route.

This was not an easy report for me to write.  Our trip was aborted half way through, and my disappointment was almost overwhelming. 

In Spring of 2001, two friends and I did a long semi-loop hike in the Havasu-Matkat-Great Thumb area.  We drove out to the Topocoba Trailhead, dropped off our packs, and continued on with the car to the end of Great Thumb, where dropped off the car and rode mountain bikes back to Topocoba. Then we hiked down the Topocoba Trail to Supai Village, and from there we hiked out of Havasu Canyon via Carbonate Canyon, and followed the Sinyella fault ravine across Matkat and Olo to 140-Mile Canyon.  On the last day we climbed the Great Thumb Trail back to our car.  It was a great trip, but we didn't have enough time to explore Matkatamiba, which was a major goal of mine.  Ever since then I have been thinking about how to get back to Matkat.  It is much more difficult now that the Great Thumb road is physically blocked off. 

Eventually I latched on to the idea of hiking out of Supai via Carbonate Canyon, as we had done last time, but instead of continuing on across the Sinyella fault,  we would drop down Matkat to the River and follow the Muav ledges down to Havasu Canyon, then hike up Havasu Creek and back to Supai.  My friend George Brent and I started making meticulous plans 4 or 5 months ago.  It would be an 8-day loop hike out of Supai, plus the time to get to and from Supai. 

I was hoping to get Arizona Raft Adventures to put in a cache for us, but they didn’t have any trips scheduled for this winter.  I wrote Tom Martin for advice, and was ecstatic when he replied that he was doing a 4-week river trip in January and that he would put the cache in for us.  We got our cache together and mailed it off to Tom in early January.  He would hide it along the river in the Matkat vicinity.  I can’t thank Tom enough for all the trouble and effort he went through to do this for us.