Three weeks after flash floods tore through the Grand Canyon and killed three backcountry hikers, rangers recovered the body of the last missing man, a 53-year-old Wyoming pilot whose wife confirmed the news on Facebook.
Grand Canyon National Park rangers found human remains Monday near Crystal Rapids on the Colorado River, and by Thursday, the family of Timothy Allen Smith had received the answer they had been dreading. Smith, a pilot who lived in Star Valley Ranch, Wyoming, about 40 miles southwest of Jackson, was the third and final confirmed fatality from the Aug. 29 flash flooding that devastated campgrounds deep inside the canyon.
His two companions, John Giusti, 46, and Brent Rosenkranz, 42, both of Granbury, Texas, had already been found dead in the days after the flooding. Smith grew up in Granbury alongside them. The three men were on a multiday hiking, fishing, and camping trip when a monsoon-driven wall of water swept through the Phantom Ranch area at the canyon bottom.
Carrie Smith, Timothy's wife, broke the news herself on Facebook Thursday. Her words carried the weight of a family that had spent weeks suspended between hope and grief.
As the Associated Press reported, she wrote:
"My family has done a lot of waiting over the last three weeks... waiting and hoping Tim (Daddy) would come home, waiting and wondering if the remains found were Tim (Daddy). We no longer have to wait, Tim was found two days ago by the Rangers at Grand Canyon National Park. Not in the way we had hoped, but we know that he was doing something he loved with John and Brent."
She added that all three men "loved the Lord and were a shining light for Him," and that "the impact their lives had on others is still being shown to our families daily."
Earlier in the week, on Tuesday morning, Carrie Smith had posted that the family was aware a body had been found the previous day and asked for prayers. At the time of the original flooding, she and her children had posted a Facebook video thanking supporters for their prayers.
Neither the National Park Service nor the Department of the Interior returned email requests for comment Thursday, and neither agency had publicly identified the remains as of that day. The New York Post reported that the remains had been transferred to the Coconino County Medical Examiner's Office, the local office responsible for official identification.
The Aug. 29 flooding was not a freak accident without warning signs. Summer monsoon thunderstorms dropped heavy rain across the canyon, and the runoff was made far worse by a burn scar left from a lightning-caused wildfire that had swept the North Rim in July 2025. That fire destroyed the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, cabins, and other structures. Without vegetation to absorb the water, the charred landscape funneled rain straight into the drainage below.
The resulting two-day deluge overwhelmed the Phantom Ranch area and sent rescue teams scrambling with night vision and other equipment to reach stranded hikers. More than 80 people were pulled to safety, 45 on Saturday and 37 on Sunday, according to park officials.
Rangers used the park's backcountry permit system and checked vehicle license plates at trailheads to determine who was still unaccounted for. Incident Commander Dave Black told the Associated Press at the time that officials had "no reason to believe, from the tips we've been through so far, that there's anybody besides the one missing person", meaning Smith.
One hiker caught in the flooding, Daniel Evans, described the terror of watching the storm build while trying to pack out. "The entire time it was raining, the entire time I'm going through all this and packing, I'm just keeping my eyes upstream, just praying that a wall of water isn't coming toward us," he told the AP.
The flooding did not just take lives. It destroyed roughly 40 percent of the park's only water pipeline, the line that supplies water to millions of annual tourists and to year-round residents on the South Rim. The damage forced the park to halt all overnight lodging and shut off water in the inner canyon. Hikers entering the backcountry were advised to carry their own water or filtration devices.
Many hiking trails and lodging areas remain closed. National Park Service officials said recently that they expected to restore a reliable water supply in weeks, not months, after determining that most of a near-complete pipeline replacement project survived the flood intact. But the canyon is far from back to normal.
On Wednesday, just two days after Smith's remains were found, another flash flood hit along Bright Angel Creek and the Colorado River during a storm. No injuries were reported. Park officials credited advance flash flood warnings and their decision to minimize personnel in the canyon before the storm with allowing crews to reach safety. Damage assessments from that second flood were still underway.
The Grand Canyon has faced an unusually dangerous stretch. Earlier this year, triple-digit heat overwhelmed hikers on Inner Canyon trails, killing three people in separate incidents. The combination of extreme heat, wildfire damage, and monsoon flooding has tested both the park's infrastructure and its ability to keep visitors safe.
Smith, Giusti, and Rosenkranz all had roots in Granbury, a small city about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Smith had moved to western Wyoming, where he worked as a pilot, but the bond with his hometown friends endured. The three men last contacted their families on Thursday before the flooding, as they made their way toward their campsite on Friday.
Giusti, 46, was a chiropractor. Rosenkranz, 42, owned a martial arts studio. Both men's remains were recovered in the days following the flood, though the specific dates and locations of those recoveries have not been publicly disclosed.
Smith's body, found weeks later and miles downstream near Crystal Rapids, closed the last open chapter of the disaster. His wife's public posts over those three weeks traced a path familiar to anyone who has waited for news that may never come, from gratitude for prayers, to awareness that remains had been found, to the final confirmation.
Flash floods remain one of the deadliest natural hazards in the American West, a reality shared by canyon country and mountain terrain worldwide. In the Grand Canyon, the narrow slot drainages and steep walls that draw hikers from across the globe are the same features that turn a thunderstorm miles away into a lethal surge at the canyon floor, often with little warning.
Several questions remain unanswered. The method used to identify Smith's remains has not been disclosed. The full extent of damage from Wednesday's second flash flood is still being assessed. And the timeline for reopening the canyon's shuttered trails and lodges depends on a pipeline repair that nature keeps threatening to interrupt.
Three men went into the Grand Canyon to do what Americans have done for generations, hike, fish, camp, and test themselves against some of the most beautiful and unforgiving country on earth. The canyon gave them no quarter. The least their government owes their families, and every visitor who follows, is an honest accounting of what went wrong and what it will take to make the park safe again.
