The casualty count from the end-of-August monsoon at the Grand Canyon is two dead and one missing, with authorities still trying to assess the aftermath.
Based on the report below, the two deceased individuals and the missing individual were all part of the same group of hikers.
🇺🇸 A second hiker has been identified as dead after Saturday’s devastating flash flood at the Grand Canyon, with a third man still missing.
Brent Rosenkranz, 42, a martial arts studio owner and father of 3, died alongside friend John Giusti, 46, whose body was found first.
The… pic.twitter.com/nqdeFsY9z4
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Last year, when I visited the Grand Canyon, my friend and I were on the Bright Angel Trail heading down into the canyon when it began to sprinkle. So we headed right back up to the rim, which was fortunate, because there was a heavy monsoon. In fact, monsoons are not exactly unusual in Arizona in July and August, and flash floods happen. If you think about it, that’s really how all the canyons came to exist — through rivers and floods.
But this is something that people who don’t know a lot about the desert sometimes forget to prepare for as they head to Arizona’s most famous national park. Of course, sometimes the monsoons come up suddenly for people who might already be far down in the canyon. For the group of hikers washed away in the flood, they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time through no fault of their own.
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Laura Crossey, a hydrologist at the University of New Mexico, pointed out in Scientific American that the area around Bright Angel Canyon still has patches devastated by the 2025 wildfires, making them even more susceptible to flash floods.
The scars hold debris for the water to carry down the canyon, and they also supply sediment and mud to the flow. That makes the water denser, meaning it can carry larger logs and boulders than clear water.
At almost any other place in the canyon, the flood wouldn’t have mattered. But this one swept through Bright Angel Canyon, the site of one of the few footpaths that lead up the Gran Canyon’s North Rim. Bright Angel Canyon also provides passage for the Transcanyon Waterline, which brings water from the North Rim to tourist sites on the South Rim.
So sadly, around 40% of the waterline is now either completely destroyed or at least damaged.
Authorities had to airlift 62 people out of the area around Phantom Ranch, which is the only lodge within the canyon itself instead of up on the rim, where most of the infrastructure is. The flood washed away almost all the footbridges over Bright Angel Creek, according to Scientific American.
Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, said, “There’s a long history of this stuff happening. It’s just that now, this time, it happened in the one tragic place where there is a permanent infrastructure and lots of people.” The water supply infrastructure is in a particularly bad way. Experts are still trying to determine exactly how long it will take to make repairs.
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