Five days after a wall of water tore through the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Star Valley Ranch man Timothy Allen Smith is still missing.
Smith was hiking Saturday with longtime friends John Giusti, 46, and Brent Rosenkranz, 42, both of Granbury, Texas, when a violent flash flood swept through Bright Angel Canyon.
Searchers have since recovered the bodies of both men.
As of Thursday afternoon, the National Park Service is still calling it a search-and-rescue operation for the only known member of his hiking party who has not been found.
While five days without answers is an agonizing milestone for his family, Wyoming search-and-rescue officials have previously cautioned against treating the passage of days as an automatic dividing line between looking for someone alive and recovering someone who has died.
Just last year, after Minnesota hiker Grant Gardner was missing for a week in Wyoming's Cloud Peak Wilderness, Big Horn County Sheriff Ken Blackburn was emphatic about that distinction.
“Given the length of time of the search is not of great concern,” Blackburn told Cowboy State Daily at the time. “We are in active search-and-rescue mode — not recovery.”
Blackburn acknowledged that a missing person's odds can diminish with every passing hour but said there were still reasons for searchers to keep looking.
Still Search And Rescue
The National Park Service has not publicly announced that the effort to find Smith has transitioned to a recovery mission.
The response is being coordinated by Grand Canyon National Park with the NPS Investigative Services Branch, Coconino County Search and Rescue and U.S. Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue, or BORSTAR.
NPS continues asking anyone who knows of hikers or backpackers who were in Bright Angel Canyon or the surrounding area Saturday to contact investigators.
That's a dramatic narrowing from the hours immediately after the flood.
On Sunday, NPS asked for the public's help accounting for 15 people who could have been missing or unaccounted for after the flood. Investigators specifically sought information about people who had been along the Bright Angel Creek corridor, North Kaibab Trail, Bright Angel Campground, Phantom Ranch, or an area north of the ranch known as “the Box.”
By Tuesday, officials had recovered Giusti and Rosenkranz and said one member of their group remained missing.
The terrain confronting Smith's searchers has been radically altered.
NPS says the Aug. 29 flood hit Bright Angel Canyon and the Phantom Ranch area, closing the entire North Kaibab Trail, Phantom Ranch, Bright Angel Campground and the Black and Silver bridges across the Colorado River.
There is still no estimated reopening date for those areas.
The flood risk there was magnified by the Dragon Bravo Fire, which burned watersheds draining toward the Colorado River, including Bright Angel Creek.
NPS warns that burned watersheds can produce not just flash floods but debris flows — fast-moving mixtures of water, ash, mud, rocks and trees capable of causing destruction miles downstream.
It was into those conditions that Smith, Giusti and Rosenkranz disappeared Saturday.
'Unknown Return'
While searchers remained in the canyon, Smith's family made a difficult move of its own Wednesday night.
They boarded a plane for Texas.
Carrie Smith shared a photograph from inside the aircraft showing the family together in their seats, luggage packed into the overhead bins.
There still wasn't an answer to the question they've been waiting days to have answered.
“There is no new update on finding Tim, as of now,” Carrie wrote Wednesday. “The search and rescue teams are working hard and we are so thankful.”
She described the extraordinary kindness people had shown them: Flights to Texas covered, housing arranged, help with airport parking and support from an employer who, she wrote, took care of needs before she'd even thought of them.
Their airport parking was covered, she wrote, for “an unknown return.”
“Our hearts are still breaking and we are worried and anxious,” Carrie wrote, “but ready to be in Texas near family and friends who understand what we are going through.”
A Meal Train was also organized for the Smith family.
Organizers are asking supporters for restaurant and fast-food gift cards along with gift cards for movie theaters, bowling alleys, and other places to give the children “a chance to get out, have some fun, and experience a little normalcy.”
For now, normal is difficult to define.
Their father has been missing since Saturday. His two friends are dead. Their mother has described the family's ordeal as a “journey of not knowing where Tim is.”
And hundreds of miles away from the family now gathered in Texas, searchers are still looking.
Five Days
Five days sounds like a long time to be missing in the wilderness, but there is no magic number where a search automatically becomes a recovery mission.
Wyoming saw a striking example barely a week before Smith disappeared.
On Aug. 25, Missouri Deputy Attorney General Shaun Mackelprang was missing for five days after setting out alone from Green River Lakes for Gannett Peak, Wyoming's highest mountain, in the Wind River Range.
Tip Top Search and Rescue coordinator Kenna Tanner told Cowboy State Daily at the time that rescuers were still trying to reconstruct his movements.
The following morning, searchers found Mackelprang alive.
He was dehydrated, disoriented and injured, but conscious.
Another Wyoming search illustrates how the operation itself can evolve while rescuers continue hoping for the best.
When 55-year-old Tami Sturgeon went missing four days in rugged country southeast of Gillette in March 2024, Campbell County searchers were simultaneously tightening and widening their search.
“We'll let the circumstances dictate, and we are always optimistic" Campbell County Sheriff's Office Operations Division Capt. Eric Seeman told Cowboy State Daily at the time.
As of Thursday afternoon, Grand Canyon National Park had not released new details about where crews were searching or what resources were being deployed. The Park Service's latest update says search-and-rescue teams continue looking for Smith while also trying to account for anyone else who may have been in the flood zone.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
