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Welcome to THE home of Grand Canyon hiking. If it happens below the rim—from short day hikes to Rim2Rims and beyond—you'll learn all the tips and tricks to have your safest and most memorable Grand Canyon experience.
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This is the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show presented by Hiken. Hiking plus kinship. That's Hiken. Together, we roam. Here's your host, my hubby, and cofounder of Heikin, Brian Special.
Brian:Okay. A quick update on the Dragon Bravo fire and then a conversation with Krocke Meshkin, a longtime Grand Canyon tour guide and shuttle driver who's familiar to many of you. We'll start to get some perspectives from those most affected by the fire that is in just a bit. First, the update from this morning is that in spite of the significant rainfall from the monsoon storms yesterday evening on the South Rim, the North Rim and specifically the fire itself, well, it just didn't get much. It didn't get enough.
Brian:So it was somewhat disappointing to hear today that we're still at 0% containment, and the Dragon Bravo fire has now burned almost 9,300 acres with 529 personnel assigned to fight the fire. There is some good news far below the rim at Roaring Springs. Yesterday, we reported that a hell attack team was being inserted at the pump house down there to begin defensive measures should the fire continue to make its way to the bottom of the canyon. Roaring Springs sits about five and a half miles and 3,600 vertical feet below the North Kaibab Trailhead and provides water to both the North And South Rims. And it came as a shock yesterday to learn there was any kind of threat that deep in the canyon.
Brian:Rob Roy Williams is the section chief of the firefighting team.
Speaker 3:We flew some hell attack guys over to the Roaring Springs pump house. They were able to go in there and complete some, defensible space around there. They're gonna go back in there today. They're gonna put some structure wrap around those cabins as well as put some sprinkler kits in there. So if that fire does decide to threaten that anymore, that we'll be able to protect that value and ensure that fire does not impact that that pump house.
Brian:Jim King, meanwhile, is the fire behavior analyst. Here he is on the fire's movement in Roaring Springs Canyon.
Krocky:The good news is the fire behavior around the remaining values up here on the rim and then down into the Roaring Springs Canyon where the where the infrastructure is for the water system on both rims. All day yesterday yesterday and and then then all all last night, there was no fire movement in that drainage further securing those values at risk. So that's very good news on the south side of our fire.
Brian:So some good news inside the canyon for the time being. The fire is growing though on the north side, and teams were sent to the area around the North Rim entrance station today to secure structures there much like they did at Roaring Springs.
Krocky:Late in the day yesterday, had a south wind come across the fire, which pushed the fire to the north, and it grew about one mile along along the Arizona Scenic Trail. That fire behavior threw spot fires out close to one half of a mile in front of itself. That fire stayed active most of the night last night. As of 04:30 this morning, it was still burning actively. So the key about this part of the fire is it's in very heavy fuels, what we call mixed conifer fuels.
Krocky:So picture large trees and then on the ground, dead logs that hold heat and are very dry. And so even with a little bit of rain or high RHs, those fuels are still available to burn.
Brian:So still a long way to go. It was also mentioned that the weather is expected to dry out again over the weekend and that the fire is expected to start growing again when it does. Alright. Well, we met Krocke Meshkin in episode 71 of the podcast, and today he's back to talk about his feelings around the loss of Grand Canyon Lodge and how he and others who live at the canyon have been affected by the devastation. Krocke lives off the land in Valley about twenty minutes south of the South Rim.
Brian:He was a tour guide for years, and in recent years, had begun to fill the need for another shuttle service, this one specializing in rim to rim. He'd built it into a strong enough business that he was gonna pay off his vehicle and be totally profitable for the first time this year. And now this, with access to the North Rim now cut off for at least the rest of 2025, Krocke, like so many others, is being forced to pivot. Life, it's been proven with this situation, can come at you fast. It was a week ago, a week ago today, that this fire was still essentially a controlled burn on the North Rim.
Brian:I'm sure from your vantage point in the South Rim, you could see the smoke, but but we weren't worried about anything becoming anything like what has happened since then. Know? A week ago, people were still staying at the North Rim, staying at the Grand Canyon Lodge, doing their rim to rims. The trails were open. And now a week later, everything has changed.
Brian:And I'm just curious what this whole week has been like
Speaker 5:for you. We've all been incredibly shook. This did happen so fast. You know? That's insane to think about.
Speaker 5:A week ago, people were still over there. And all that sort of prompts these emotions of grief, shock, anger, everything coming out. And, yeah, I'm still wrapping my head around all this. It it's been a very wild week.
Brian:What was it like, and what were you hearing as the evacuation orders started to come in? Because you've been a a member of the the Grand Canyon community for a long time now. I'm sure you have friends on the North Side. What what was happening? What were you hearing as as the evacuations began?
Speaker 5:The evacuations began on July 11. That's that's when I got the first, you know, mass text. They're they're asking visitors to leave. And suddenly, I'm thinking, okay. You've got the two fires.
Speaker 5:So the White Sage Fire is the one closer to Jacob Lake, and that's possibly gonna block the exit point. You know, that's that's initially what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, okay. There's this other fire on the North Rim, but it's not that bad. There's not cause for concern.
Speaker 5:There's this bigger one by Jacob Lake that is prompting the evacuation of the visitors, and I'm thinking, well, you know, I'm probably gonna have the week off. I probably won't do much driving this week, and, you know, I was ready to just accept that and have a week off, and didn't think it was a big deal at that point.
Brian:Were you hearing anything from the people that you knew on the North Rim as they you know, you said the visitors got evacuated first. I think it was later the same day where you got the go notice that it's time for everyone to to get out, and that is the first indication that we had that the Dragon Bravo fire, the one that affected and is affecting to this day the North Rim, and now down into the canyon, that's the first indication we got that something was really, really wrong.
Speaker 5:Yeah. They started to evacuate all the staff, and I I wrote down a timeline because even my head is, like, tripping out over all this stuff. What I scanned back through my phone, the visitors were one day, and then that night, it was kind of like, okay, this is interesting. We then, the next day, I remember getting set. You know, they say set.
Speaker 5:You're in set position. You know, prep prepare yourself because you might need to evacuate. And I should be clear. I'm not on the North Side at this point. I'm on the South Side while I'm getting all these texts.
Speaker 5:So this would have been July, yeah, July 12. The staff is asked to evacuate very promptly. It goes from set, and then I feel like it was maybe an hour or a couple hours later, it was go. A go order, evacuate now. I was waiting because I thought I might possibly get calls.
Speaker 5:On the day that the public, the visitors were asked to evacuate, I did get a call that day, somebody needing a ride. It was a couple of hikers on the South Rim. They were gonna rent a car, and so I was driving them to Flagstaff on that day so they could go to the airport and and get a rental car. And I was just, you know, I thought maybe people are gonna be calling me, maybe I'm gonna rush over there and help, and it also was a balance of maybe I'm just gonna be in the way. You know, maybe they're evacuating these people, they're trying to get all the vehicles out, everything.
Speaker 5:You know, I wasn't gonna go over there without somebody asking me for help, or asking me to go over there at that point.
Brian:So what was it like when, you know, you wake up Sunday morning, I assume if you'd even gotten sleep, and and, you know, now we're talking about we've lost the Grand Canyon Lodge. And, you know, the night before, as we all went to sleep, I think that, at least for me, you could start to see on the map that it was inching closer and closer to the lodge area. And but it still wasn't there yet. And then we get up Sunday morning, find out that at about 03:00 in the morning, the the Grand Canyon Lodge was was lost. What was your reaction?
Speaker 5:Initially, it was just shock. You know? It was disbelief. And I I do wanna say getting in all this stuff, you know, so much respect to the crews that were fighting this fire that had their lives on the line. So much respect to these people.
Speaker 5:I'll back it up a little bit. I I wanna get into the lodge with you. I wanna talk about that day before. So July 12, you know, everyone's evacuating. I'm I'm seeing from friends.
Speaker 5:I have a friend who left for the Bryce Marathon. He he had actually left, and he put a post online. He said, it's not looking good for the North Rim. And that really made me wonder. This is one of my friends.
Speaker 5:He's he's just an incredible Grand Canyon hiker. He's done over 50 summits in the canyon, and he he says, it's not looking good for the North Rim. Coming from this guy, I was like, what is he talking about? You know, what is that? Like, on what level does that mean?
Speaker 5:July 12, I had gone to some friends had a sort of a delayed fourth of July party for the community. For anyone who was out of town for fourth of July, they all got together. So that was Saturday night, July twelfth. I'm at a party. I'm excited.
Speaker 5:You know, I'm telling people about this lifestyle that I have now. Essentially, I had created my shuttling company in in 2023, but I held on to other employers while that took off. It wasn't until late last year that I decided to go all in with the shuttling company. And I was basically explaining to them. I said, I think I have a job that I don't I don't have to con have concern about AI taking my job or anythings like this.
Speaker 5:Like, to drive that route rim to rim, you know, anyone who does that, TransCanion, other companies, you know, these are great drivers. Those are winding, twisting roads, everything. I'm not gonna see a Waymo doing that route. Right? So I'm thinking I got total job security the next five to ten years.
Speaker 5:I I found something special, and that was the vibe. That was the vibe at the party. Everybody I knew, you know, we're chatting. There was smoke everywhere. You know, there was smoke in the air, but nobody there there was no feeling on Saturday night that the North Rim Lodge was gonna burn down, that the North Rim was then gonna be closed for the remainder of 2025.
Speaker 5:There was not that feeling that night. It was a sudden blow on Sunday morning. And this is
Brian:a bunch of Grand Canyon people. You know? You guys are in the know. You're communicating with each other. There was no indication on Saturday night other than the fact that, you know, you maybe you're starting to see the fire inch toward the the lodge, but it was even hard to fathom then as it got closer that, well, surely it's gonna be protected, and surely this can't happen.
Brian:That's the vibe that that you all had at that party.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And and just knowing the topography, you know, it's on a peninsula. It's right out there on a peninsula that I think for one thing, shows you how big the fire had now built up to be, and the conditions insanely dry, insanely hot. We're in a heat wave this week. And the the combination, you know, for that to continue down, you know, this peninsula that has a huge parking lot, that has places that could be set up to fight it, was just yeah.
Speaker 5:It it it was unbelievable, and the photos came out. So there was there was a call for the locals and residents. We were on a group call getting information direct from the park service on Sunday morning. We got So
Brian:what happened pool Sunday morning? Let me just back up just for a second, because you go to this party. I assume you leave this party at some point. You probably go back and go to sleep, and it when you woke up the next morning that you found out what happened?
Speaker 5:Yeah. And not even think the And
Brian:call no whistling the night before, and then you wake up in the morning, and the lodge is gone. What's your reaction?
Speaker 5:Completely gone. Complete disbelief. The photos coming out, that was I mean, that was the evidence. That was like, okay. This thing has burned.
Speaker 5:And those photos just started passing around. Like, I saw those fly from page to page to person to person so quick. Everybody was talking about it. So that's Sunday morning. We're still kind of digesting it.
Speaker 5:You know? It's like the grief. It's like the loss of a loved one. You lose that, and you're in this state of shock suddenly where where, like, it's like you think, like, you blink your eyes. You're like, no.
Speaker 5:No. No. That that didn't happen. It's still there. You know?
Speaker 5:We're still gonna go over there. That you know? And it it takes days to process that. That was when I started getting calls from people that don't even live at Grand Canyon, was the thirteenth. Know, that afternoon,
Brian:it seemed to blow up to now national news. When did that mindset start to I don't know. When did it start to shift for you? Because, you know, not only are you someone who is obsessed with the Grand Canyon, and has been part of community for so long, you've got your livelihood, you know, tied directly to the Grand Canyon, and tied directly to folks' ability to access the North Rim, and to be able to do rim to rim. That's that is your clientele.
Brian:That's your livelihood. So how long did it take it for you to your mindset mindset to just shift, and be like, wow. Wait a second. This isn't just a tragedy that is affecting Grand Canyon Lodge and everything on the North Rim and all the people who live there, but now my livelihood is affected too.
Speaker 5:Yeah. It it, you know, it wasn't the initial thing. I I wanna be clear about that. You know, it wasn't like my business, my money, that kind of stuff. You know?
Speaker 5:It was it was so much the people, the friends that lost everything, the friends on the North Rim that had to evacuate and leave stuff behind, thinking about the ecosystem, the the North Kaibab Trail, you know, and suddenly realizing it was beyond that. We we thought the lodge was one thing, and then we're realizing this is actually hitting the North Kaibab Trailhead, and that sort of started to come in by the end of the thirteenth, the fourteenth that I'm realizing rim to rim is never gonna be the same. I'm potentially not gonna be able to operate. And in order to run a business, I should clarify too, for people who don't know me, I'm probably one of the last small business owners to operate on the North Rim Of The Grand Canyon. You have the lodge, and all the structures are owned by the Park Service, but you have people, you know, companies come in and they operate the lodge.
Speaker 5:They operate the general store. For me, I had gotten my authorizations through the National Park Service to operate as a small business, and you have to pay all kinds of fees to do that. My insurance is over $500 a month to do those drives. The Park Service wants me to be insured up to $1,500,000 in case I were to cause some damage to the Grand Canyon. You know, in case I were to back into the North Rim sign and destroy it, I'm paying out these insane fees.
Speaker 5:That's the stuff that started to, you know, hit me eventually. It was like, oh my god. I'm not gonna be making any money, and I'm gonna have to call a shot, basically. I could still drive in Arizona. I have all my permitting with the state.
Speaker 5:However, if I wanna stay official with the park service, I have to keep paying all of this overhead to the park service, and it's it's possibly gonna be over a year, you know, before I'm doing that kind of business again.
Brian:So, what did you decide to do? Have you made any decisions about your future?
Speaker 5:I think there's options. You know, I I I have to hold on to this belief that there's options. For me, the Grand Canyon changed my life. When I arrived to Grand Canyon, I had three maxed out credit cards. I had been making $8 an hour, and I was driving a van that cost me $800 when I showed up to Grand Canyon ten years ago.
Speaker 5:My life was really bad. You know, I was really struggling to survive, and I got this job at Grand Canyon that essentially pulled me out of debt, pulled me out of, you know, poverty. I was, you know, instead of having this budget of, like, $20.30 bucks a week for food, suddenly, I felt like I was living like a king. I was working at Pink Jeep Tours. Geology, and I was learning about biology and flora and fauna, and I was making really good money.
Speaker 5:And the Grand Canyon, like, I I need to put that out there. The Grand Canyon saved my life. It changed my life. I essentially had to start over, you know, at the time I moved here, and things went so well. And it just kept, you know, getting better and better throughout the years.
Speaker 5:I had a plan to start this business, and the business was my way of creating my own schedule. When you work for the other companies around Grand Canyon, you're asked to work all the holidays. You're giving away your summer. You are essentially, you know, helping people to have a great vacation, and you're not getting to do that yourself. And this year looked like a year that I was gonna be able to improve my quality of life.
Speaker 5:I took a vacation for fourth of July. You know, my last time to the North Rim was July 1. I had worked with a group on July 1, and this was the first year in ten years that I took a vacation on fourth of July weekend, which ironically is when that lightning strike happened.
Brian:So what so have you made a decision on what's next for you?
Speaker 5:Sorry. I'm getting yeah. I I I
Brian:It's a lot, Krocke. This is a lot to keep straight It's in your a lot to talk about, man. It's emotional. It's might be infuriating in some regards, but
Speaker 5:Yeah. You know, you've
Brian:got you've got to move on. So what's next?
Speaker 5:And for the listeners at home, my my laughter is not like, I I I have to like find some humor in all.
Brian:It tells Yes. Levity above all, Crockett. It's just through a lot of a lot of dark times
Speaker 5:in life.
Brian:Don't you worry about that.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I have to find some humor in this. There's nothing there's nothing defined for my future. I have options, and I think what it looks like is I'm gonna shift into documentary filmmaking. I had hiked rim to rim with a retired NASA engineer who lost his vision due to glaucoma.
Speaker 5:We did rim to rim with him last year. And I had permits that I got permits through the National Park Service to film that whole thing because he wanted his story told. He wants to inspire others who have a family member or are losing their vision and show them that even once you've gone blind, can still do cool things like rim to rim. So he actually yeah. Over it was over a week ago.
Speaker 5:It was before fourth fourth of July weekend. He had invited me. He's he's gonna go for a world record, the largest group of blind people to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, and so they invited me on that to to document their journey. And there's there's 11 of them, so they do have a plan to kinda pull together money and and find a sponsor for this doc. And so, I haven't quite got the green light on it, but it it looks very possible that, you know, that was just gonna be a trip, and I have clients booked all the way September, October, November this year.
Speaker 5:Many of those clients I've been on the phone with, I've been texting with, I've been calling them, you know. Of course, some of these people have never even seen the Grand Canyon. They were planning rim to rim this year, and that's not gonna happen. My plan was I was gonna go do Kilimanjaro, come back, and finish out my business for the year before diving into the dock. So, you know, as as troubling as everything is and and also just allowing myself that space of of allowing time to process, allowing time to think about it, It's it's likely that I will dissolve the shuttling portion of the company and then dive into the documentary, put the full focus on these two docs.
Brian:You say dissolving the company with an eye toward coming back when things change, or or what?
Speaker 5:Well, the funny thing is, I purchased rimtorimshuttle.com. I was so confident in the company, I said, you know, I I ought to claim that. Nobody's going by just rim to rim shuttle. And and mind you, I I set out to do tours. Originally, I had this CUA, the the commercial use authorization to do road based tours and and trail hiking, and I just struggled to advertise that.
Speaker 5:And so this year, I only got the author authorization to shuttle people. I do not have the ability to give people tours this year. And now this you know, if I had that authorization, they when you apply for these things with the park service, that cutoff happens at the March. And so that's it. I cannot give people tours.
Speaker 5:With with ten years of knowledge working as a Grand Canyon expert, I could get a job with another company, but I'm not gonna be able to do that through my company. So, yeah, it looks like it would make the most sense to just stop operating, and it's it's one of these things. They're they're saying close for the rest of the year. I think I have to on the side of caution. We have to consider it's it's not just rebuilding.
Speaker 5:It's gonna be cleanup. They're possibly not gonna let any citizens in there because of some of the toxic materials that could have been spread about from the burning of some of these structures. Wastewater treatment plant, we know for sure was one of the structures damaged. It's possible they're not gonna let citizens in until all that cleanup has occurred. Then I know there's been a lot of talk too.
Speaker 5:I mean, everyone's throwing out great ideas of, like, a temporary lodge, or maybe they can just allow access to the trailhead before the lodge a new lodge is completed. And so, yeah, I I think it it would just I would just be wasting money. You know, I'd be paying out money that it would it you know, it'd be better to let this one go, and whenever things are back up, you know, see about coming back as, you know, a new new design, a redesign myself.
Brian:Isn't it something that we're talking about, you know, all these future plans, and not just for you, but what the future might look like for the North Rim that we're talking about this while this fire is still we found out this morning, it's 0% containment, ninety three Zero.
Speaker 5:Growing still
Brian:still penetrating deeper into the canyon where it becomes more and more difficult to actually fight the fire. It it seems like that part of this is is being, you know, not really reported. It seems like the national media, even the media here in Phoenix, are just focused on the lodge still a few days later. They're focused on the North Rim. They'll say the fire burning on the North Rim, and you just kinda wanna scream and say, guys, this is in the canyon.
Brian:And we can tell by looking at the maps that it has ravaged the upper portion of North Of The North Kaibab Trail, all the way from the trailhead down to Supai Tunnel, best we can tell. And there are hell attack teams now who are protecting the area around the pump house, which, of course, of course, is just North Of Of Manzanita, between Manzanita and Roaring Springs. And that is staggering to even think about, that that fire is, you know, working its way down, not necessarily down the the trail parts itself. But, you know, if if you if you don't know, the lodge is basically right above Roaring Springs and Roaring Springs Canyon. So the fire that that was in the lodge area is is working its way down the canyon right there.
Brian:That's its fastest route to get to the bottom. But the fact that we're even having this this conversation is is pretty stunning, and and the fact we're talking about people changing their livelihoods, and we're, you know, coming up with fundraisers and t shirts, and and this fire is still burning. How crazy is that to you?
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. 0%. It's burning, it's growing. I would love to see more of that covered.
Speaker 5:I had been asked to do an interview for ABC fifteen yesterday, and that aired last night, and I probably got, out of what they interviewed me, I maybe got 10 words in, made the cut. You know? So that was cool that they they gave exposure, and they interviewed some other people around the park and people at Jacob Lake. All the exposure is very welcomed right now because, yeah, it's it's not just me. I I wanna be clear.
Speaker 5:You know? It's not just about me and my company and all that stuff. There's so many people with loss. So to talk more about, yeah, the current situation. This fire is growing.
Speaker 5:It's going into the canyon. Every night, the the past couple nights at least, I've been up there. If you stay after the sun sets, the flames come into view. You're watching the smoke as the sun is setting. As the sky gets darker and darker, boom, the orange flames come into view.
Speaker 5:And that was absolutely devastating the other night. I don't I don't think I could've done this interview a couple days ago without having that time to kinda swallow that. You can see it right back behind Buddha Temple. This would be near Whidfors Point, if anyone's done the Whidfors Trail on the North Rim. That's gonna be all fried.
Speaker 5:This is you you mentioned it flowing to, like, Roaring Springs and that kind of stuff. That one's gonna be the Transept Canyon is you know, when you step out of the parking lot and there's that little sign that says Transept Canyon. I'm talking about the parking lot on the North Side. A lot of I see this all the time. Visitors step out, and they think they're seeing the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 5:But there's a little wooden sign there that says Transept Canyon, and then it says Grand Canyon View with an arrow. It's trying to tell people, hey, this is just a side canyon. But, yeah, that one, all that stuff dumping, you know, the ash and debris dumping into the canyon as well. It It's growing. Storms started arriving, which that's an I wanna get into that in more detail.
Speaker 5:But, now we have the situation of rain that is possibly gonna wash some of the materials of these structures into the canyon.
Brian:Well, you posted something on Facebook this morning, and I encourage everyone to follow Crocky. You mentioned the rain, and you had a pretty poignant moment last night, it looked like to me, where a lot of introspection, and you went for a a run along the rim trail as these thunderstorms rolled in, and we got heavy rain. I think we're all a little disappointed to to see the briefing this morning and still see the 0% containment. So perhaps the thunderstorms had some effect on the fire, but not nearly to the the extent that we were hoping for.
Speaker 5:Correct. Yeah. Last night was wild. I can walk you through that one. Essentially, I I wasn't gonna go back up.
Speaker 5:I felt like I needed a break from it, and that's sort of been the psychology of, like, do I watch this? Do I just go to Flagstaff and and, you know, ignore this? You know, what do I do with these days? And I sort of had a moment where I was like, I think I need to just bear witness to all this. I think I need to go visit with my friends.
Speaker 5:North Rim employees have now been brought over to South Rim, some of them. And, you know, I I spent the past few days visiting with other employees, other tour guides, essentially, tour guides on the South Rim that they essentially they're not affected as their job, but you can imagine what it would be like to have to go out and give a tour to excited visitors who've just shown up, and and you're dead inside. You know? You are so depressed, and you're having to put on a show and and give a tour to these folks. I witnessed that yesterday.
Speaker 5:One of the the Park Service Interp rangers was giving a geology talk while the fires are happening right behind him, and and, you know, he he definitely acknowledged it, but you could feel it in his voice of, like, you imagine everyone having to continue to work on the South Rim as they are hearing the stories of their friends, possible family members, people who they don't know what's next. They don't know how long it's gonna be till they can go back to that culture and that lifestyle of living on the North Rim.
Brian:I imagine that the emotions, you know, we've talked about it. I've just kinda run the gamut for you across the entire spectrum. I'm sure there's sadness. I'm sure there's some anger. You have to have some optimism as you look forward.
Brian:So many things going through your mind. What is the overriding emotion for you right now?
Speaker 5:I think the overriding emotion for me is empathy. I have to have empathy for for people, for the ecosystem, you know, the forest, the the biology, the animals, I have to have empathy. I I've I've kind of gone through, you know, the classic stages of grief, the the disbelief, the anger, the rage, you know, all that stuff. I I've definitely gone through that, and a lot of my friends, you know, we've we've had conversations where, you know, these converse we're like, this is just us talking. You know?
Speaker 5:We're not we need to get all this stuff out. This is not stuff we necessarily would wanna put on record, you know, but just to talk some of that anger and and grief out. I've been going through all that stuff, especially with friends, and and now I think it's all about empathy. I had gone up to do the interview with the news yesterday. I decided to stay up there, and I decided to do one of my favorite runs on the top of the canyon is running along the trail of time.
Speaker 5:You park at Yavapai Geology Museum, and you can run along all the rock layers without the madness of dropping into the canyon. You can have yourself just like a nice little five k run. And so I decided to do that even though the storms were coming in, and I had a very spiritual moment. As the rain got stronger, I was now in between Yavapai Geology Museum and the Grand Canyon Village area, the rain gets heavier, and hail starts falling. Thunder is echoing throughout the canyon.
Speaker 5:Giant storm clouds are right overhead. The smoke is in the distance on the North Rim. As I get to about Verkamp's, lightning is now flashing. More hail, more rain, and I decide I'd better go stand on that porch. I I knew I was gonna get wet, so I didn't wear a shirt, so I couldn't go inside anywhere, and I I kinda screwed myself over in that way.
Speaker 5:But I I just wanted to be in it. I just wanted to, you know, feel the rain. I just I needed I needed an emotional moment because I was getting so tense and so angry about everything. I needed this sort of release and this emotional moment. I end up standing on the porch at Vercamps.
Speaker 5:So Vercamps is that little, you know, gift shop run by the GCC that's close to El Tamar Hotel, and that thing is older. I I believe that's over a 100 years old. That's older than the North Rim Lodge was, and it was fun to stand on, you know, a piece of history, watch the smoke on the North Rim, the rains coming down. There was a very calming feeling. There were tourists around that were they they they were just reading books.
Speaker 5:You know? They I don't know if they had hiked the trail of time. They were gonna wait out the storm and hike back, but, yeah, they seemed so relaxed, and and to just be around that kind of energy, even for a moment, felt good. A GCC employee stepped outside of her camps, and he was poking at or peeking at the fire, you know, looking over to the smoke. And just then, it it seemed it was hitting the Dragon Bravo Fire area, the Whitforce Point, and that plateau and the Peninsula.
Speaker 5:And I looked on my radar, and and sure enough, it was. You know, we we've seen that too, all the posts on on your Facebook page and everything, that the rain arrived, a nice dousing of rain hit, The smoke was turning more of a white color, and flames were bursting out, you know, big orange flames that we're looking with the naked eye at this point over 10 miles away. Giant flames were bursting out as that rain hit, and then the flames kinda dying out. Just incredibly symbolic. I then, as the rain calms, I start running back, and those photos you were talking about, yeah, the the post I did, that was on the the run back because suddenly, it was like the limestone was wet.
Speaker 5:The rain is on the other side. There was such a calming feeling of hope. The electris literal electricity in the air. Lightning lightning was I I forget what you call that, but it was like cloud to cloud lightning was happening. I didn't feel at risk, but it it was a little foolish, I'll admit.
Speaker 5:Running in this storm out there on the edge of the canyon was was was foolish, but I
Brian:You were I probably thinking, what else could go wrong?
Speaker 5:Right? Yes. This was my my, yeah, climax moment in the film where the the character is nothing to lose. And and yeah. So I just took it all in, and and by the time I got to it's called Grandeur Point.
Speaker 5:It's it's really close to Yavapai Geology Museum. It's the one point that sticks out there. And all these tourists had kinda shown up with their tour guide. They're in ponchos. I'm here shirtless, covered in water, and we all kinda watched the sunset there, and the rainbow came out, and it just felt magical.
Brian:And those pictures that you took, those images you captured, you could feel that magic, Krocke, because you man, you you posted them in black and white, and that may seem counterintuitive with all the color in the Grand Canyon, but they were serene and just absolutely gorgeous. Some of the some of the best images I I think I've ever seen, and I'm pretty critical of those kind of things. I think that that was something special, and I hope everyone can can go check that out. You mentioned empathy. You also mentioned anger.
Brian:You just said, you know, you're angry about everything. How do you make those two emotions work together? That can be tough. It's a tough balance.
Speaker 5:I've seen great people in my lifetime figure that out, and anyone who can do that is somebody I I really admire to have that passion, to have that drive, yet also lead with the empathy. And that's I think this is my moment of realizing how I wanna come out of this thing. I felt my life was amazing. I felt my life was getting really good, and it was a sudden shock of, like, oh my god. I'm screwed.
Speaker 5:How am I gonna make a living? I thought I was moving into a world, you know, where a lot of possibilities were coming my way. I don't have kids. I don't have a family, but, you know, it was looking more clear that even something like that could be a possibility as well as my life was going, and definitely days of spiral of thinking, well, I don't know what's gonna happen now. And so, if I were to let myself spiral, and let myself get angry and point fingers, it's not gonna fix this.
Speaker 5:It's not gonna restore those forests. It's not gonna restore the damage to the North Kaibab Trail. It's not gonna bring back the history of that lodge, the items in the lodge. Think of the kachinas. There were kachina costumes in there.
Speaker 5:There were Navajo rugs in the North they're called the Grand Canyon Lodge. It's very confusing for people that don't live here, I should point out. It's called the Grand Canyon Lodge, but it's on the North Side, so some of us call it the North Room Lodge. We so, yeah, we have to have empathy for for all that kind of stuff, you know, is essentially my lesson from yesterday. This was the gift that was given to me in that storm.
Speaker 5:The rain didn't put everything out, right? We got news that the fire is growing, yet I was able to have this spiritual moment sort of bringing me back to the ground. You know, there's that feeling when you get angry, you get tense. There's a feeling, like, of numbness, and I felt so much last night as I was essentially just crouched on the limestone, the wet limestone of the South Rim, an ancient seafloor, 280,000,000 years old, that feels like it comes back to life whenever it's covered in water. I'm crouched on there having my moment of just, you know, I I definitely agree with folks who want answers, and that's not for me to give.
Speaker 5:Right? This is gonna come down to investigations and whatnot. But, yeah, I I think this should be covered more. I think people should ask questions, and I think the root of these questions is how do we make a better world? Because I always imagined I'd be able to show my kids, my grandkids, those trails and those forests, those beautiful aspen, fir, ponderosa pine forest that will now be lost and will take over a hundred years, if not two hundred years, to return to the state that we saw him in a week ago.
Brian:Krocke, thanks for doing this, man. We're we're rooting for you. We're rooting for everyone up there. There's no doubt it's hard, and there's so many of us in the hiking community who who feel the loss. But, you know, I think it's important as well to acknowledge that we don't fear feel it nearly as deeply as those who lived there and are part, truly part of the day to day Grand Canyon family.
Brian:So thank you for coming on and sharing. It's greatly appreciated, and it helps us, you know, really put the the human side to this story. So on behalf of everyone in our community, thank you.
Speaker 5:I appreciate that, Brian.