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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.
Host Brian Speciale brings you stories of triumph, tragedy, and trail-won wisdom—told by first-timers, seasoned vets, and Canyon insiders alike.
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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 Hiken, Brian Special.
Brian:Oh, boy. What a, what a couple days it, it has been. You heard Zena right there at the intro. Zena is actually with me here. Our goal today is to just kinda update you on everything that's going on, what's happened over the past couple of days.
Brian:And, know, Zena, you know, I can be negative and down in the dumps, and I have been over the past couple of days, and I was this morning as I thought about everything, and I I was on my hike. And then I listened to the podcast that that you did, your new podcast called Sacred Steps, which are hiking meditations. And the one you did this week was about the word kaibab, and it just placed me at the Grand Canyon. It reminded me why I love the Grand Canyon so much. So that was just that was perfect.
Brian:What was the what was the meaning behind that?
Zeena:Well, kaibab means mountain lying down
Brian:Yeah.
Zeena:Or upside down mountain. But it was really just a journey inward. But I think that what's going on right now is is really deep. It's it's a deep transformation.
Brian:Yeah.
Zeena:A lot of transformation happening, and I feel like we need to take time to pause and honor what's been lost. All the trees, the habitats, the buildings, the homes, the lodge. But also remember that it's a time for rebirth. It's a time for renewal.
Brian:And that's why we're gonna be positive about everything that's happening today. You know, before we before we started this, I just saw the first photo that I've seen of the lodge today, and it was an aerial shot. I haven't verified where it came from or whether it was real or not. I can't imagine that it's not. I mean, everything's perfect.
Brian:But I choose to look at that, what I saw, as something extremely
Zeena:positive.
Brian:It was taken from the canyon side of the the lodge, so from behind where the the great room, the sunroom, the big windows look out over the over the canyon, the dining room, they look out over the canyon. And what you see, what's what's so striking about it, and why I choose choose to be positive about this whole thing is because the bones are there. The structure is still there. Yes. The wooden parts, the roof is is gone.
Brian:Right? There's there's smoke and and debris, and but the structure, the the the spirit of that place still lives.
Zeena:Absolutely. It doesn't die. Nothing ever dies. And it's just making space for what's yet to come.
Brian:And I saw, if you zoom in on that picture, you look on the on the veranda, on on the iconic veranda with the Adirondack chairs looking out over over the canyon, just of the most iconic places and views in the world. And if you look real closely, you can still see those chairs. You can see them still lined up on the deck. I'm not saying they weren't touched. I'm not saying they weren't burned.
Brian:But from that far away, you can still still see that they're that they're there. Mhmm. And the bones of that place are are still there.
Zeena:Yes.
Brian:And they're going to rebuild it. Absolutely. It's going to be rebuilt. It's gonna
Zeena:be more beautiful than ever. Yes. Stronger, more beautiful.
Brian:Yes. It's gonna be just a chapter in the story. And I I talked this morning. I did a post. It really helped cleanse me this morning.
Brian:I did a post on something that I doubt anybody else has this kind of reaction that I that I do to to things because I can be kinda weird like that. But it was the picture a picture that I took back when we were there in May of the cast iron radiator Uh-huh. In the great room, in the sunroom, that's down there in the corner by Bridey, you know, the statue of the of the famous Bridey of Grand Canyon, the the mule, Donkey. And that thing to me just represents the timelessness of Grand Canyon Lodge. Right?
Brian:That thing has probably been operating in that same spot for, you know, close to a hundred years. It reopened in 1937 after the last time it burned. I bet that thing's been there ever since. Never thought to really replace it because it just sits there, and it watches generations go by, and it just does its job, and it's timeless. And that's the entire vibe of the North Rim to me.
Brian:It's why I love it so much and why on this podcast, I'm always talking about finishing on the North Rim, finishing a rim to rim on the North Rim because there's nothing like stepping out of the rim and either getting a ride or walking down to Grand Canyon Lodge, and you're suddenly just stuck back in time from the moment you walk into the lodge, and you and you go to check-in, and and they've got the old key system. There's no key cards. Right?
Zeena:They got the old key system in in the little in
Brian:the little slots behind the desk, and it's just something that you would expect to have seen a hundred years ago, and it's still like that. Right? But that stuff is all well, that stuff might be gone. Right? That radiator, I bet, is still I bet it's still there in in some form, and I hope they I hope they save it because, again, it's just the timelessness of the North Rim and the timelessness of Grand Canyon Lodge, and nothing's gonna change.
Brian:It's still gonna be one of the most remote places in The United States. There's only gonna be one road in and one road out. It's not like we're gonna have this development where some big resort comes in there, and suddenly it's unrecognizable. If you saw that picture that I saw today, and I encourage you to go look for it, you see the Grand Canyon Lodge is still there. We've just gotta rebuild what's inside, and it's gonna be a glorious day when that lodge reopens again because it's gonna happen.
Zeena:Absolutely. Like, the fire is it's ancient. You know? Everything that's happened The land knows what to do. The canyon knows what to do.
Zeena:It'll all be rebuilt, and it'll all rise again.
Brian:It's gonna be a magical day. It's it's coming. I don't know if it's five years from now, ten years from now. A lot of political bureaucratic red tape to get through, I'm sure, but the will is gonna be there, and it's it's it's gonna happen. So I you know, I'm excited about that.
Brian:I can say that this early on. But let's talk about the the nuts and bolts of what's happening here because that's really the point of us getting on here is to just kinda update you on everything that's going on. It was only one week ago. Was it one week? It was one week ago today that we got first got word of this fire.
Brian:Mhmm. And it was essentially a controlled burn, a lightning caused fire that happened on the July 4. And the park decided to manage it as essentially a controlled burn. Right? They were gonna let let it run its course and take care of, you know, what fires do in terms of the you just mentioned, the rebirth.
Brian:Fires are important. There are controlled burns on the North Rim every year. So, you know, obviously, the Park Service saw this, and they're like, let's just let this go and and manage it, and they stayed on top of it. And a few days later, it was it was 10 acres, then it was 27 acres, and everything was fine up until Thursday or Friday when suddenly, you know, we heard the evacuation order, first of the Grand Canyon Lodge guests, which was caused by the White Sage Fire, which is burning about 50 miles to the to the north. But then the next day or later that day, I don't remember which one it was, but they got the go notification that that all North Rim personnel had to had to get out, and they had to get out fast.
Brian:And I heard that in some cases, they had about ten minutes, you know, to get out of there because the Dragon Bravo fire was had had jumped fire lines, and it was it was getting close. It was a nightmare scenario.
Zeena:It's crazy.
Brian:Right. A nightmare scenario. When when the Park Service made this decision to allow this thing to to run its course and and and before they before they put it down, it obviously got away from them and got close to structures, and then the winds kicked up, and it was just it was just a nightmare scenario. And then, you know, a couple of nights ago, I'll I'll never forget it. It was just yesterday morning.
Brian:Today's Monday. Yesterday was Sunday, and I woke up at I woke up yesterday morning just wondering what would happen because things had started to really go sideways on Saturday night, and found out at 3AM that the that the lodge was was lost.
Zeena:I I didn't even wanna check my phone. Yeah.
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. Kinda when you looked at the maps that night, Saturday night, it just it did not look good, but you just kinda held out hope that maybe things would change. And, you know, you might wonder why why the firefighters couldn't couldn't defend the lodge area. They did the best they could.
Brian:I mean, I know that they dumped tons of water, literally tons and tons of water on the the lodge and the surrounding buildings the night before before they had stopped flying for the night and just drenched it. But, you know, the fire just didn't care ultimately when it came down to it. So they did what they they did what they could. They couldn't necessarily be on scene because if you're familiar with that area, it's essentially out on a peninsula, on a land peninsula, and there'd be no place to there'd be no place to hide, no place to retreat to except, you know, a thousand feet straight down. So at some point, it just became nothing nothing that they could do.
Brian:But the update that we got this morning from NPS, 5,700 acres is what the Dragon Bravo fire is up to. And as of this moment, you know, Monday afternoon, 0% containment. And it has started to seep down into the canyon. We've lost 70 plus structures on the North Rim, including, of course, the lodge, the cabins, a lot of personal residences, the wastewater treatment plant, which is going to be a huge deal. Nothing can get rebuilt until until that thing's ready ready to go again.
Brian:The visitor center, the gift shop, I mean, just everything is
Zeena:just But this has happened before. The lodge has burned down before.
Brian:Yeah. It burned down in the thirties, 1932, and it was rebuilt in 1937. So, yes, we we assume it it will be back. But the fire now is down into Roaring Springs Canyon, and that's important to to our hiking community because that's where Upper North Kaibab is. You know, North Kaibab essentially runs through Roaring Springs Canyon all the way down Eye Of The Needle, Manzanita, the pump house down there, actually, Roaring Springs proper down there where the where the pump house is, and then and then through Manzanita.
Brian:You know, that that's Roaring Springs Canyon. It essentially runs all the way to the base of the of the North Rim. I don't know where it is. I really would like to know how far down it has gotten. I've heard that it's burnt down below the Coconino layer, Coconino sandstone layer.
Brian:That would be Coconino overlook. I I just I I
Zeena:don't the detail.
Brian:We don't have the details, and the park service, I don't think, has has gotten those details yet. But I they did say this morning that it was gonna be a high priority to put that part of the fire out burning in Roaring Springs Canyon. They have two air tankers, two heavy helicopters, and a lot of their attention is being, you know, focused on stopping the fire in in Roaring Springs Canyon so it doesn't get too much farther down. As of now, you know, they say that the pump house is not threatened, which is at Roaring Springs down below where you see the the famous waterfall there where the water supply for the north and south rims comes from out of that out of that that aquifer, that underground aquifer there that's inside the canyon wall. They say the pump house is not threatened at this time, so that tells me that it's still, you know, pretty far up in the canyon.
Brian:So that's good. But, again, we saw how things fast things changed with this fire already, and, who knows what's gonna happen? I'm not a fire expert. I'm not making predictions. I'm just telling you what we know so far.
Brian:So that's a concern, obviously. It is not going to cut off water supply to the South Rim. Because as, you know, we talk about often, and as I just talked about, the water for the South Rim comes from the North Rim. It comes from Roaring Springs. It comes from that that aquifer, and it is fed by gravity.
Brian:And this is the reason why it is not going to affect it's not gonna affect the water supply or water service on the South Rim is that the water from Roaring Springs is fed by gravity all the way down the canyon to Phantom Ranch, all the way across the Silver Bridge, all the way up to Plateau Point. So it's it manages by gravity to go up about 1,500 vertical feet to Havasupai Gardens. And only when it gets to Havasupai Gardens is it pumped to the South Rim. So gravity takes care of everything. Nature takes care of everything.
Brian:Physics takes care of everything until the water gets to Havasupai Gardens, and that's when man takes over and you need electricity to pump it to the rim. But there's no problems at Havasupai Gardens, and so there will be no water service disruptions on the South Rim. So that is good news. Electricity has been cut off to Roaring Springs from the North Rim, So they're not able to pump water to the North Rim currently, but I don't think anybody's too concerned about that because there's not any infrastructure to service right now, unfortunately. So those are those are those are just the facts, but I just I can't stop thinking about all the people who have been affected by this, especially the employees, the seasonal workers on the on the North Rim.
Zeena:They hear us.
Brian:The park service staff, they were given such little time to to get out of there. There was one story I really wanna share with you. And, JD, I hope you don't you don't mind me doing this because you posted about posted about it in our hike in Grand Canyon Facebook group. But JD Yingling and his wife are volunteers and have been for a long time. They do the preventative search and rescue volunteering on the North Rim every year.
Brian:JD's awesome, man. He's always, know, you he's always posting pictures, and when they go rolling in there with their fifth wheel and the when the gates open just before May before the gates open on May 15 when they're going in there to get set up, and you can tell just how excited he is, and it just embodies the love that that so many have for the for the the North Rim that, you know, people will spend their retirement years up there working working for free essentially because they believe so strongly in in the cause and in the in the place. And JD and his wife found I find out that they were in Kanab, Utah for their days off when the evacuation order came. So they had to just they were already out of town. Right?
Brian:So they couldn't get back in. Oh my god. Their fifth wheel, their truck, all their personal belongings left behind. And as of today yeah. And as of today, they still didn't know anything.
Brian:They still didn't know if they had anything to go back to or any personal belongings to retrieve. They still haven't found out. Can you imagine how difficult that would be?
Zeena:Oh my gosh. I can't even imagine. That's horrible.
Brian:That situation knowing. Yeah. The the not knowing part. And think he was hoping to find out that today, but as of last check, they had not found out. Couldn't tell
Zeena:us anything.
Brian:JD, we're thinking of you, and we're thinking of everyone who you know, part of their part of their soul has burnt with the with the Grand Canyon Lodge. I mean, it's it's you hear these stories of, you know, the the employees who would gather on the on the veranda that we talked about where the Adirondack chairs are, and they got the big fireplace back there. And I know that was a place where generations of Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim employees would would gather, you know, to talk about their day and to share their love of the canyon, have a have a drink, and look out over the canyon and see the the headlights headlamps down below, the hikers on their way up and are on their way down, or look across to the South Rim and see the lights and know that just 12 miles away is actual civilization. But to get there, you either gotta hike 21 miles straight across, or you've gotta drive around for four and a half hours. That's how how you know, it's gotta be a tight knit community
Zeena:Absolutely.
Brian:Up there. So I feel so so bad for all those people who you know, so many of them will, you know, lose their livelihoods for a while out of this. I know the park service is trying to reassign folks, and they're gonna do the best they can to reassign folks to roles on the on the South Room in the meantime because there's there's no telling when when anybody's gonna be able to get back in there to even assess the damage. Again, 0% containment on this fire. So you just said that not knowing, it's gotta be so brutal.
Zeena:Absolutely.
Brian:Alright. Well oh, there was one piece of good news today. Another piece of good news besides that picture. And when we were in the North Rim last year
Zeena:Mhmm. Remember? The mules.
Brian:The mules. And so many people have asked about the mules.
Zeena:I'm so glad they're safe.
Brian:Yeah. We did find out today that they have been evacuated and taken back to their corral in in Southern Utah. Mhmm. And they are safe and healthy and happy and Perfect. Nonetheless.
Brian:Right? Probably gonna be on a on a long hiatus now because who knows when they'll be they'll be needed again.
Zeena:They might know more than we think. No. They might.
Brian:They might. Who who am I to say? But another thing that, of course, folks in our our group wanna wanna know about is the the hiking and what this what this all means. Let's talk about what it means just just today. Okay?
Brian:Just today. South Kaibab, North Kaibab, of course, and Bright Angel Trail below Havasupai Gardens are all closed. The reason for that is the smoke. It's apparently very, very thick down there. And I heard Lisa Hendy, who was on the show not too long ago, the Canyon District Ranger, who's handling a lot of this response with the fire as well, says that she doesn't want hikers or her staff down there in that smoke.
Brian:So it's probably it's probably pretty thick down there at Phantom Ranch and on South Kaibab. I mean, we've seen the pictures and on on that lower part of Bright Angel Trail as well. So there's no access to the to the trails except for Bright Angel. If you're hiking, if you're up there and you're hoping to do rim to rim or rim to river, you can still hike on Bright Angel. You can go as far down as Havasupai Gardens, which is four and a half miles and about 3,000 vertical feet down.
Brian:All the same warnings apply. It is still July, folks. That's one of the reasons why we're in this predicament that we are. It's so dry. The monsoon really hasn't hit yet.
Brian:We haven't had those big rainstorms, cloudy days. It is dry. It is hot. It is miserable. Don't be distracted by the fact that we've got this fire going on, and then tell yourself that everything's cool and copacetic right now because it's not.
Brian:It is still extremely dangerous to be on Bright Angel Trail in the middle of the day. So please keep that in mind. It's so easy for tourists and experienced hikers even to get themselves into trouble by going downhill and thinking, man, this is so easy. It's the grand deception we always talk about. This is so easy.
Brian:This really hard on me. I'm going down. I'm looking out over the canyon, and I forget that I've gotta turn around and go back out. So don't get yourself in that predicament where you are on that trail anytime. You know, I'm gonna say between nine and five.
Brian:The park, I think, says ten and four. I'm saying personally nine and five, and I wouldn't even be on the trail past 09:00 in the morning or before 05:00 in the evening. It's just not happening because it's not worth it. After 04:00, you start to get the shade. It starts to shade in, and that entirely changes the game.
Brian:So if you go down, hang out at Havasupai Gardens, hang out in the creek, and start up later in the day when the shade takes over because it is a brutal, brutal climb even in the best of conditions. But in the direct sun and the heat, it's downright dangerous. Please do not be a statistic. Well, the the rangers don't need to they they don't need to deal with another
Zeena:They don't unfortunate any more. Don't need any more than
Brian:they're already dealing with. So please, please keep that in mind. You know, I'm always talking about the heat, and we just want people to stay safe. But North Kaibab, the decision was made to shut down North Kaibab, access to North I should say not North Kaibab, but access to the North Rim for the entirety of the 2025 season. That means, folks, that no matter what, yes, rim to rim season is over.
Brian:You cannot do it until at least at least May of twenty twenty six when the North Rim typically reopens. Do we know if that's gonna happen for sure? No. Of course, we don't. We don't know we don't know how long the North the the North Side is gonna be is gonna be closed.
Brian:And no matter what, there's gonna be no Grand Canyon Lodge. So your only options for staying on the North Rim next year if it reopens will be Jacob Lake Inn and Kaibab Lodge, both of which are safe from the fires, fortunately. But rim to rim season, no. There there it's not it's not happening. It is not happening.
Brian:There's no there's no way to do it. There's no public access to the North Rim for the rest of this season. It is closed. It is shut down. Rim to rim to rim, you know, if you're gonna do an out and back, I don't know when that will be available again.
Brian:Because, we talked about the fire in Roaring Springs Canyon. We do not know what kind of damage there has been to the North Kaibab Trail itself, and especially the upper reaches of it between the trailhead and, you know, say, Supai Tunnel or Redwall Bridge. We do not know what has happened. There is a lot of vegetation up there, and I know the fire, just looking at the map, was essentially at the North Kaibab Trailhead. And if it has seeped down into Roaring Springs Canyon, which we know it has, but if it's seeped down yeah.
Brian:We don't know where. It is it is it off to the east that it seeped down into the canyon, or is it at where North Kaibab Trailhead is and it starts to dive down? We don't know that yet. So imagine the damage and destruction that could have been done to that trail with fallen trees and just charred remains of brush everywhere all over those trails. We do not know.
Brian:And then what's gonna happen this winter if we have a bad winter and the runoff? Right? Exacerbated by the fire damage. We do not know. So will rim to rim to rim be possible the rest of this year?
Brian:I don't know. I don't know. I wish I had the answer to it because I would love to do it. I would love to get up there and put my eyes on the damage and everything that's happened so that I could report back to y'all, but I don't know when that is going to be feasible. And you know, if you are thinking about doing rim to rim to rim because it's like, oh, I'll just do rim to rim to rim instead of rim to rim, just I'll always throw out this warning.
Brian:Rim to rim to rim is an extraordinarily difficult hike to do it in a day, and you're gonna have no choice because there's no place to stay on the North Rim. You have no bailout. If you commit to it, you've gotta do it, and it is one of the most difficult things that you can ever imagine putting your body through to do all in one day. If Cottonwood's reopened, if Phantoms reopened, Bright Angel Campground, you if could break it up into multiple days, of course, that's a complete game changer. So that could be an option as well, but again, we don't know when the campgrounds are gonna reopen because they are all currently closed as well.
Brian:So a lot of questions. I know that that there are not any solid answers that I can give you right now, except that the North Rim is closed for the rest of 2025. And, you know, even if it reopens in 2026 at some point, it's gonna look completely different than it did just a week ago.
Zeena:We'll just have to see.
Brian:Yeah. We'll just have to see. There's there's there's really no other way to there's really no other way to put it. We're just
Zeena:still in it. We're still
Brian:in it. We're still in it. We're still in it. And we'll we'll we'll keep trying to update you and pay attention to everything that's happening. Of course, the updates are going out regularly in our Hikin' Grand Canyon Facebook group, so search for H I K I N, Hikin' Grand Canyon.
Brian:Our Facebook group where there are rep updates, man, I'm putting them out. Every time I hear something and confirm it, I'm I'm putting it out to you. You know, working hard, I think I owe that to everyone in this community. I feel an immense responsibility to to keep you informed and to to encourage you and to remind you that the canyon's not going anywhere. Right?
Brian:The canyon's not going anywhere. And Grand Canyon Lodge is gonna be rebuilt. And I'll just say it again. That day is gonna be a glorious day when it happens.
Zeena:Yes. It'll be beautiful.
Brian:Yeah.
Zeena:This has happened before, and it'll rise again.
Brian:Yeah. I mean, we're only talking about 1937. So what? Eighty eight years ago. Yep.
Brian:It was the last time that this happened. So I I if you look at it in the grand scheme of things, it's it's a blip in time in the history of the Grand Canyon, not e not even a not even a blink. Right. Isn't that crazy to think about how long that thing has been there, the canyon itself? Anyway, I think that's all I got.
Brian:Yeah. You got anything else? Any words of wisdom to lead to leave us with? Because I know that you wanna do a meditation on on fire. So maybe just give us a little preview of the of of fire and why fire doesn't have to be this the evil bad guy all the time.
Zeena:Well, fire is is ceremony. It's medicine. It's not destruction, and it teaches us that even in the chaos, we don't have to collapse. We can be reborn, and that we can transform and transmute.
Brian:And that's what's gonna happen. Mhmm. Right? That's all we're looking at. You know?
Brian:It's I feel like this hit me so so hard just because of the love that I have for the North Rim and
Zeena:how I know.
Brian:I I was planning to go this week. I know. You know? Because I saw that we got some monsoons potentially coming in later this week, the temperature's gonna drop into the nineties in in Phoenix. And I was like, okay.
Brian:I can I can heat mitigate that and be smart and do a south my favorite thing to do, south to north, spend the night at the North Rim, just hang out, just soak in the vibes, and, man, and then walk back and walk back to the other side? You know? That's one of my my absolute favorite things to do in the whole world, and it's gonna be a while before before I get to do that again. I'm speaking Yeah. We will.
Zeena:We'll do it again.
Brian:We will. We were there on May 15. We were there for opening day this year, and, man, and just everything about it. I mean, you remember that drive up and how I I I just can't shut up about it. There's something about the North Rim, and it is so hard to quantify.
Brian:It is. And we just you drive up there, and you drive through Flagstaff, which is beautiful in its own right. And then, you know, you're driving through the Painted Desert and the Vermillion Cliffs and past Lee's Ferry, the Navajo Bridge where Zena got to do her rim to rim to rim crossing the Navajo Bridge because Marble Canyon is technically the Grand Canyon. That was so much fun. And then you get up there onto the Kaibab Plateau after going past Vermillion Cliffs, which are just so stunning.
Brian:And you get up to Jacob Lincoln, you go and you grab your cookies, right? And then you just continue on through the gate to the North Rim, and you hope to eventually see the bison down there on that forty five minute drive all the way to the to the North Rim. It's a trip. And it's just so beautiful, the aspens and the pines and the rolling meadows. I just it just it just it just makes your heart happy.
Brian:And then you you get to the North Kaibab Trailhead, and it's like, that's where we're gonna that's where I'm going tomorrow. You're dropping me off tonight, you know, or you're dropping me off in the middle of the night. And then you continue on to Grand Canyon Lodge and And has stuff. It does. You see the rustic cabins, and you go check-in.
Brian:You have dinner with this most incredible view over the canyon, and and you just, again, soak in the vibe, sit in the chairs outside, walk around. It hurts my heart that we're not gonna we're not gonna have that for a while. It was a special place for us. But Yeah. But we're going back.
Zeena:Yeah. We
Brian:are. And Xena doesn't hike so much, but she you took the the mules down to Supai Tunnel last time, and that was that was very special too. So, man, I I better be careful because I won't shut up again because I can I could talk about the North Rim
Zeena:I like talking about it?
Brian:All day. I do too. I do too. It's just so special, and it will be special again. There's gonna be a hole in our hearts for for a while, but, you know, I just encourage everybody to keep to keep the employees and the people who you know, we're just visitors, you know, you and I.
Brian:You know, people have reached out and asked, you know, how I'm doing, how you're doing. You know? We're we're fine. We live in Phoenix. We're we're guests of the North Rim when we go.
Brian:And I don't wanna lose sight of that, of the fact that, you know, that's all we are. And the people who live there and who have given their lives to it are something much more, and they're the ones who are really affected by this. And I wanna keep them in mind first and foremost and and ways that we can help them. And I know there are GoFundMe's going around, and they're looking for donations to the food banks. It's really early in the process, and I will be sure to keep everyone updated on that.
Brian:But those are the people that that I want everyone to hopefully keep in their in their thoughts and
Zeena:The true heroes.
Brian:They are the true heroes. They are. And and they need they need us now. They're they're they're deeply affected by this. You know?
Brian:We are to a certain extent, but I just wanna honor the the fact that those are the people who who we should be thinking about. Alright. Thanks for doing this with me, Zena.
Zeena:I love you.
Brian:Yeah. I love you too. We'll we'll we'll we'll come back and and provide more updates as events unfold, I guess. But we are gonna step away from the podcast. I do wanna say that that the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude show.
Brian:I'm gonna step away from that for a little bit here. I don't think it's overly appropriate to be talking about rim to rim and and all that right now, especially considering we we can't do it. We're just gonna take a pause right now. It's the middle of the summer anyway, and we're gonna focus on this fire and the the rebirth of the North Rim, which is coming. So thank you all.
Brian:I appreciate everyone's support and your comments and your engagements on social media. Trust me. I am on Facebook in our hiking Grand Canyon Facebook group.
Zeena:All the time.
Brian:All day. I am. Yeah. I I again, I feel responsibility.
Zeena:You know, especially especially voice of the Grand Canyon.
Brian:I well, let's not get carried away. But I But
Zeena:You are.
Brian:Look, I I I don't I don't I don't I'm not comfortable hearing you say that, so don't say that. But I I, again, have a responsibility, I feel like, to, to let everyone know what's what's going on and keep you updated the best we can. So I'm gonna leave it, at that. This is the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show, presented by Hiken. You know, more than ever, Together We Roam.
Brian:Right? Together We Roam.
Zeena:Together We Roam.
Brian:Yeah. Alright. See you next time, everybody. Thanks.
Zeena:Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.