Three Friends Hiked Into the Grand Canyon Together. A Flash Flood Left Two of Them Dead and One Still Missing.

It rained four times that Saturday afternoon, in the same stretch of inner canyon, over about six hours. The first three rounds soaked ground that steep, rocky terrain doesn't hold onto water well to begin with. The fourth round — half an inch to a full inch of rain in thirty minutes — had nowhere left to go but down, fast, into Bright Angel Creek.

By the time it reached Phantom Ranch, the creek wasn't a creek anymore.

Dr. John Giusti, 46, a chiropractor from Granbury, Texas, had come to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with two friends: Brent Rosenkranz, 42, a martial arts instructor also from Granbury, and Timothy Smith, 42, a NetJets pilot from Star Valley Ranch, Wyoming. They were camping along the creek corridor when the flooding hit on Saturday, August 29.

Giusti's body was recovered Sunday night near Crystal Rapids. Rosenkranz's death was confirmed shortly after. As of the most recent search updates, Smith remains missing, and the National Park Service's Investigative Services Branch has asked anyone who hasn't heard from a loved one who was hiking the Bright Angel Creek corridor that weekend to come forward.

Elsewhere along the same corridor, park rangers were running a different operation: getting people out before the water reached them. Sixty-two hikers and campers were airlifted by helicopter from the Phantom Ranch camping area and the lower North Kaibab Trail on Saturday alone. Evacuations continued into Sunday from Cottonwood Campground and Phantom Ranch itself. In total, 82 people were moved to safety.

The flood didn't just endanger people. Nearly every footbridge spanning Bright Angel Creek was destroyed, cutting off hiker access across the water entirely. About 40% of the Transcanyon Waterline — the 12.5-mile pipeline that supplies the inner canyon's drinking water — was also destroyed.

Park officials said roughly two weeks of water reserves remained in storage as of the latest update. Hotel stays inside the inner canyon were prohibited starting that Monday, and multiple trails and campgrounds were closed indefinitely while crews assess what's safe to reopen.

Part of what made this flood so severe wasn't just the rain. Burn scars from the Dragon Bravo Fire on the North Rim had already stripped away vegetation that would normally slow runoff and hold soil in place. Burned ground sheds water fast instead of absorbing it — one more way a fire from earlier in the season kept shaping what happened long after the flames were out.

The park remained open to North and South Rim visitors even as the inner canyon dealt with the damage. A flood watch stayed in effect through at least the following Monday evening, and search operations for Timothy Smith continued alongside it.

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