Grand Canyon flood kills two hikers and leaves a third missing at Phantom Ranch

A Saturday thunderstorm sent water down Bright Angel Canyon and through the Phantom Ranch corridor at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. By 1 September the National Park Service had confirmed two dead and one person missing. Eighty-two people were taken out, many of them by helicopter.

The dead are John Giusti, 46, a chiropractor from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and Brent Rosenkranz, 42, who ran a martial arts studio. Timothy Allen Smith, 53, a Wyoming pilot, has not been found. The three men had planned two nights of hiking and fishing. They last checked in after reaching the rim and making camp on Friday. Families in Granbury, Texas, raised the alarm when the men went silent.

Dave Black, the NPS official running the response, said search teams were still working and that day hikers without permits might not be on any list. The park stayed open for day use. Footbridges and campground pitches along Bright Angel Creek were washed out.

Why that stretch floods

Phantom Ranch sits about a mile below the rim, on Bright Angel Creek, and can be reached only on foot, by mule or by river. Mary Colter designed the stone cabins a century ago. In 1966 the same creek produced a flood the US Geological Survey still calls catastrophic after about 14 inches of rain on the North Rim.

Last year the Dragon Bravo fire burned 149,399 acres on the North Rim and shut the North Kaibab Trail. As the trail reopened, the Park Service warned that a burned watershed sheds water and debris faster. It added gauges, signs and an evacuation plan. Saturday’s storm used that funnel.

Hikers near Phantom Ranch and Bright Angel Campground described creeks turning in minutes and cliffs throwing waterfalls. There is little high ground in the inner gorge once the creek leaves its banks.

Utah the next day

On Monday the same monsoon band sat on Zion, Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef. The north fork of the Virgin River, which usually runs near 35 cubic feet per second, passed 5,900 cfs, the fifth-highest reading on that gauge. Rangers closed every slot canyon, including the Narrows. About two inches of rain fell on Zion in a day. Guide companies cancelled walks. A video from the park showed water pouring off a cliff onto a roadway already covered in mud and rock.

The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City had southeastern Utah at a Level 3-of-4 risk for excessive rain before Monday’s peak. Flash flood warnings covered Kane and Washington counties, including Springdale, and parts of Emery and Wayne. The Grand Canyon deaths and the Zion closures are the same late-summer monsoon, one day and one drainage apart.

What visitors are being told

Slot canyons and inner-gorge campsites are poor places to wait out an afternoon cell. The echo inside a narrows hides the sound of water arriving from a storm the hiker cannot see. Henry Strommen, a Zion guide, put that geometry in one line for a local station: the canyon is an echo chamber.

Giusti, Rosenkranz and Smith walked into a watershed that had already been flagged after a fire. Two of them are dead. One is still in the canyon. That is the count as of 1 September, and it can still move.