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Welcome to the home of Grand Canyon hiking. The Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show helps hikers plan, train for, and better understand hikes below the rim, from short day hikes to Rim-to-Rim, Rim-to-River, Phantom Ranch, Bright Angel Trail, South Kaibab Trail, North Kaibab Trail, backpacking trips, heat safety, water planning, shuttle logistics, and more.
Host Brian Speciale shares Grand Canyon stories, trail-tested advice, safety lessons, interviews, and community wisdom from first-timers, seasoned hikers, rangers, Canyon insiders, and everyday people who have learned powerful lessons below the rim.
Whether you are planning Rim-to-Rim, dreaming of Phantom Ranch, preparing for your first Grand Canyon hike, or looking for honest stories of triumph, tragedy, mistakes, and trail-won wisdom, this podcast will help you hike your best hike.
Listeners call the show “an invaluable resource,” “the perfect mix of inspiration, realistic caution, and tips for success,” and “a welcoming place and wealth of information.”
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You know what? I do have to say that I hadn't thought this far ahead in the story yet. I feel like this is a day that we feared would come in the aftermath of the Dragon Bravo fire, But I didn't know what it would look like. I didn't hadn't really thought hadn't thought it through to that point. You know, so far to this point, this season has been a bonus as far as I'm concerned.
Brian:I never thought we'd open on May 15, that the North Kaibab Trail would be ready, especially Upper North Kaibab. But Adam Gibson and his crew got the job done and got that trail open for the hiking community, and I thought it was somewhat of a miracle. And I went up there on May 15, and I remember just looking out and saying standing at Coconino Overlook and looking at the way that that trail is situated, and it's like a funnel down in there, and looking up at the burn scars on both sides and saying, man, I tell you, one big storm, and it just seems like this thing's gonna this thing's gonna be in a lot of trouble. And we've survived it so far this monsoon season. You know?
Brian:So far, there's been monsoon storms. It's been an an active monsoon, but I guess we just never know what the storm is is going to be. And apparently, today was that storm.
Speaker 2:Today was the one that the that that we couldn't get past.
Brian:And really the only thing that we know, the only information that we have today so far is in the Phantom area. And a little bit about what was happening at the North Kaibab Trailhead area. I know that they were there was some flooding up there, and there was severe weather up there. I know that there were reports that Asinine Hill, that area was flooding, and you see what happened at at Phantom. The videos are starting to circulate now, and it's just wild that this is all happening just a couple of days after the flooding in Nepal, where I'm sure I'm not the only one who is watching that and and thinking of days like today of what would happen in the canyon.
Brian:So to have this happen, well, that's all very fresh on our on our minds is pretty interesting timing. And I should say that, you know, we're fortunate so far in knowing that no injuries have been reported. So that's great news. I would say that the the emergency flood plan that the park service came up with in the aftermath of the Dragon Bravo fire and the increased risk of flash flooding as a result of it has worked. And they should be commended for that because I know at about 02:15 this afternoon, twenty or thirty minutes I think before the flood came through, I'm not sure about that.
Brian:I think that I guess about how the timing worked out. But I know they were evacuating people to higher ground at that point. And so that's a big reason why nobody was hurt that we that we know of. Do we know if there were any hikers out there in the frying pan or worse in the box at the time? We don't know.
Brian:You know, the box is a four, four and a half mile stretch of narrow canyon where there's not a lot of places where you can get to higher ground. There are some, but not a lot. It's the last place that you would wanna be in a in a flash flood. And I also know that Ribbon Falls, that area, around Bright Angel Creek, that the gauges were showing, I think, to over 16 feet of what they what the creek was running at at one point. And then that's I think when the gauges were destroyed or they got taken out.
Brian:I heard something about that too. So
Speaker 2:an absolutely epic, crazy, unfortunate for us hikers day in the Grand Canyon. Colorado River, if you haven't heard, is closed.
Brian:When have you ever heard that before? Maybe it's happened before, but I have certainly never heard of it. The Colorado River is closed because of debris in the Phantom Ranch area that has made it out into the river. And I have seen some photos of the area around the delta. Now when we're talking about the delta, for those of you who aren't familiar and those of you who are, The delta is essentially at least the delta as it pertains to to us hikers is where the North Kaibab Trail and the South Kaibab Trail come together, and you cross the bridge right there or the bridge that was to go over to the other side on the way to Silver Bridge, and the restrooms are over on the other side, and the where you can refill your water, and then you just continue on past the corral and down to down to Silver Bridge.
Brian:So that bridge we know
Speaker 2:is
Brian:gone. I've seen the I've seen the photos. I've seen the video. That bridge is is gone. And I've seen overhead photos of the area, and it looks to me like a big chunk of North Kaibab from from the Bode Beach area all the way to the Delta has just been obliterated.
Brian:The flooding came through there so significantly. I can see it in the photos that usually it will come around where the kiosk is right there, and where the bathrooms are, and it just kind of meanders around where the new water treatment plant is, and kind of takes a right turn right there and heads down to the river. And that's where the the Delta actually is. But what this flow did, it was so powerful and so significant that much of it kept going right up to the left when it overfilled the banks and went right down where the trail was. And so it's it looks like it's essentially cut a new channel right there where the trail was, and then it it too veered off and went down to the right into the river separately by itself, an entirely separate flow.
Brian:That was crazy to see because you see that as a hiker, and now you know that there's gonna be no access from Black Bridge to the Phantom Ranch area unless you're, you know, going down and and through the through the creek beds and off trail, and you know the NPS is not gonna allow that for for a long time until they come up with a with a solution. But we already know just by seeing that that that part of North Kaibab, that little section of the very beginning of North Kaibab or the very end depending on which way you're going, that that's gone. And that's gonna have to be rebuilt along with the bridge at the Delta. And I had mentioned, yeah, the river is closed because, I was gonna say, that if you've been down there recently, you know right there by the Delta, by the bathrooms, by the kiosk, that they have that temporary trailer village set up for the contractors who are working on the Trans Canyon Waterline project. And I can tell you that there where that that channel was that I told you about that the water had overflowed and cut a new channel, that's right where that trailer village was.
Brian:And I can tell you that looking at that picture, there is not a single sign of any of that infrastructure. It is gone. And I've been told that some of those trailers are floating right under the Silver Bridge. So it took all of that infrastructure straight down that new channel and out into the out into the Colorado. And so they've got a significant mess to to deal with.
Brian:And who knows what that's gonna mean for the river trips that are currently out there upriver? We don't know. I mean, there's just so many challenges NPS has.
Speaker 2:And then the bridge at Bright Angel Campground.
Brian:So that's essentially across from the corral. You all know where it's at if you've been there. If you're walking up toward Phantom from the the Delta, it's the bridge that crosses the creek right over to Bright Angel Campground, and the restrooms are just up a little bit on the on the left. I was down there maybe ten days ago, two weeks ago, and I was taking photos of that sign on the other side
Speaker 2:of on the other side of
Brian:the bridge, on the Phantom side of the bridge, the one that says North Rim this way, South Rim this way. It's such a cool sign. I was just down there taking a bunch of pictures of it. And I saw video of that area, and I had to ask someone if that's where it was. I had just been there.
Brian:I did not recognize it, Because the bridge is gone. Because everything around it
Speaker 2:is just mud and debris, and nothing like it was earlier this morning. Right?
Brian:So that's gone. We don't have any idea what kind of damage was done to Phantom Ranch. Was there any damage done to Phantom Ranch? We don't know. We don't know yet.
Brian:Did all the cabins make it through? We don't know. So a lot of questions. And you have to ask yourself, obviously, if the bridges at the Delta and at Bright Angel Campground didn't survive, well, there are four bridges in the box. So how how are the how are those gonna make it?
Brian:Right? If that debris flow had started way up in Bright Angel Canyon, and it picked up steam, and was already flowing very heavily, and if it was at 16 feet at Ribbon Falls, and that water's all funneling into the box and cruising right down to Phantom Ranch and out into the river, which is what we saw. So if those bridges are gone, I mean, isn't that just common sense to think that if the bridges around the Phantom area are gone, that the
Speaker 2:four bridges in the box are threatened and might be gone as well? I mean,
Brian:that seems to make sense. So this is a again, for a hiker, this
Speaker 2:is a this is a disaster that looks like it will far outweigh even the Dragon Bravo fire itself because the damage from that on
Brian:the trail, relatively
Speaker 2:speaking, wasn't as bad as what this looks like it's going to be. So lot of questions. All we can do is speculate until we get official information. But,
Brian:you know, rim to rim season two thousand twenty six, I would say this is the event that puts an end to that.
Speaker 2:And, again, all we can
Brian:do is all we can do is speculate. I don't know how they would ever get anything reopened in time, or how they're gonna be able to prioritize their limited resources to what they're gonna fix first, or what order they're gonna they're gonna repair things in. And then we have to realize as well that, you know, because of the increased risk of fire due to
Speaker 2:the Dragon Bravo fire risk
Brian:of flooding due to the Dragon Bravo fire, how many years of this are we going to have to
Speaker 2:endure? It's probably gonna be
Brian:a long time. Every time a
Speaker 2:a thunderstorm cell settles over the North Rim,
Brian:how long are we gonna
Speaker 2:be at risk for catastrophic events just like this. It would seem to be for a lot of years to come, at least for the foreseeable future. So I'm very grateful that
Brian:they got the trail open, and everyone was able to do their rim to rims up
Speaker 2:and up until this point. But I would say the I'd
Brian:say North Kaibab will probably be closed for definitely the rest of this season, and who knows how much who knows how much longer. I was wrong about them getting it open for this season in the in the wake of the fire, so I'm not gonna make any predictions. But I would say that for the rest of this season, I'd say it would be very unlikely that any hiking will be able to be done on North Kaibab. We don't know the condition of Upper North Kaibab. Maybe North Kaibab will be able to stay open down to Manzanita.
Brian:I don't I mean, who knows? Again, it's just speculation, but I would say rim to rim hiking is probably out. I would say the classic rim to river route is that's definitely not gonna happen. It's funny because coach Arnie was up there this morning, and he talked about he talked about in his video that he got to the Delta in, like, two hours and five minutes, and he was busting it down there. He must have known something that he had to get the heck out of there.
Brian:But he got down there this morning and crossed the bridge. It's no longer there. Crossed Silver Bridge and got out of there, and he's back home in Phoenix now. So he is safe. Everything is everything is good with coach, but he was one of the last hikers to do a rim to river.
Brian:Because now, from what I saw and the fact that there's no bridge and that part of North Kaibab and the other side of Blackbridge is open, I don't think anybody will be accessing the North Side Of The Blackbridge for the foreseeable future. So maybe the best we can hope for again, speculation. I hate to do it. But maybe the best we can hope for in the coming months, at least until next season, would be Rimmed Rivers that go, maybe they'll let you get down to Blackbridge and then turn around there. More likely is that they'll probably cut you off at the river trail there.
Brian:So I I would I would hope that you could take South Kaibab to the river trail, and then take the river trail all the way over to Bright Angel. That'd be great. That'd be fantastic if that was that was still an option. So rim to rivers like that will still be possible. I did hear there was some flooding in Havasupai Gardens as well on the South Rim, which would have nothing to do with the burn scar from Dragon Bravo.
Brian:But I haven't heard anything else on that, so that's probably good news. But the biggest concern right now, I guess, is getting the debris out of the river, figuring out what the damage is down in the Phantom Ranch area, and somebody did tell me that it is really bad down there. That's the that's the quote, the direct quote. It's really bad down there. So what does that mean?
Brian:We still don't know other than what we have seen so far, and that being the bridges, the damage to North Kaibab between Boat Beach and the Delta. That's that's really all we know, and we know that so far there have been no reports of any injuries, and the NPS is evacuating 50 some people from the Phantom Ranch area who will have some pretty amazing stories to tell, I would think. My my only concern, I think, is that if anyone was in the box when when this thing came through, and was it high enough that they were in any danger? I don't know. I don't think are they stranded?
Brian:Because what if those bridges those bridges are out? I mean, guess you could figure out ways if it's not flowing too high to to pick your way across, and you could probably get yourself out of there without too much trouble, without a bridge. It'll just be a little bit of a hassle and a little inconvenient. But I just hope no one was there when the when that flood came through. Because again, the fact that we were all watching, the world was watching the flooding in Nepal makes you just stop and think.
Brian:And I was thinking about it two days ago as I was seeing it. Was like, wow, now that's that's a flood. And I immediately thought of the Canyon and the increased risk that Bright Angel Canyon and the Phantom area were under. And I'm sure a lot of you were thinking the the exact same thing. So we can only hope for the best.
Brian:That's all the news that that that I've got right now. If anything else comes up, I'll pop back on here and do another do another Facebook Live. But until then and also follow along. I've got a post that I did earlier today that says BREAKING something about something about the flood. Follow that one because that's where I am updating the news as it comes in.
Brian:I'm just updating the post. So I hope you guys are getting the notifications on that, Because every time I hear something, I'm of course gonna gonna pass it along to you. And this, again, I said this earlier, but as a as an old news guy who has done this for a living for a long time and was a news anchor and grew up in TV news, It's very difficult for me to have to report on something like this from Phoenix while it's all happening. I wish I could I could be there, and I also wish that Facebook's algorithm was a little friendlier, and would push the content out to everyone who needs to see it, which is everyone in this group. Right?
Brian:It's very frustrating to do these things, and when you actually have a true breaking news event that you know people need to hear about and want to hear about for it to not be able to get out there is very frustrating. So if you guys could like and follow and share and do all that stuff, that helps the algorithm say, hey, this is worthwhile. Let's get it out there. Facebook. Drives me nuts.
Brian:Anyway, stay safe out there, everyone. The Great Grand Canyon Flood of two thousand twenty six. We're just starting to learn what's happening, and I can promise I'll keep you updated. So thank you all, and
Speaker 2:have a great night.