Grand Canyon

Memories of the North Rim, Grand Canyon

Today I learned, to my utter dismay, the historic Grand Canyon Lodge inside Grand Canyon National Park, on its North Rim, was destroyed by a wildfire.

There are few details outside of the initial announcement made the National Park Service the morning of July 13, 2025.

The lodge opened in 1937, and it has been run for years by the rapacious and problem-plagued Aramark concessionaire company, which for decades has poorly managed many national park public assets under government contract at parks like Grand Canyon.

A historic photo at the the the North Rim Lodge, taken in the late 1930s. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service, for Creative Commons use only.)

The lodge had one of the finest viewpoints I’ve ever had at any United States National Park, which serve as cultural and natural institutions that remain national treasures of all the American people. Long before white settlers stepped foot on the North American continent, all the lands in what is now Grand Canyon Park were the domain of indigenous tribes, who continue to call the area home.

As of midday July 13, 2025, two wildfires are burning on the North Rim, having burned more than 45,000 acres. The White Sage fire has burned 40,126 acres (16,200 hectares) near the North Rim, and the Dragon Bravo fire, burning to the south within Grand Canyon national park, has scorched 5,000 acres, according to the InciWeb website.

The moment I read the story about the blaze and destruction of the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, my mind raced back to the one night I spent there in September 2005.

I had flown down to Arizona from my then home in Anchorage, Alaska, to visit my old grad school roommate from our years together at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991 and after. He and his family had settled in beautiful Flagstaff. The trip allowed us to catch up and do an adventure–running across the Grand Canyon, one of the most famous and world-class trail runs in North America.

My friend and host, Jeff, was very ambitious.

Jeff plotted a run from the South Rim, to the North Rim, and then back (called “Rim to Rim to Rim,” in trail parlance). I would meet him at the Grand Canyon Lodge for the night and do the simpler and shorter “Rim to Rim run” (about 24 miles) from the North Rim to the South Rim only. My run is the classic run. Jeff’s run is for the truly hardcore trail runner, which he was at the time.

We got incredibly lucky, scoring a room in a cabin by the lodge that had a vacancy open up before I arrived. We had been prepared to camp out in the elements on the North Rim, but I am not sure how that would have worked. Even in late summer, it can be freezing at night. But fate was good to us.

Everything worked out perfectly. Jeff ran across solo safely to get our cabin room. I took the shuttle bus to the Grand Canyon Lodge, arriving after a five hour drive, near sunset, after spending the first half the day on the South Rim doing a canyon rim hike. We both got about four to five hours of sleep, awaking around 4 a.m. I ate a terrible pizza at the lodge’s subpar cafeteria to load up on carbohydrates.

We awoke in near freezing weather and darkness under the stars. We grabbed a photo in the dark at the North Rim Trailhead, just where the 6,000 foot descent to the Colorado begins.

I had a nasty spill that day, cutting open my hand on some sharp rocks, but otherwise the day was pure magic. We made excellent time, stopping at Phantom Ranch, by the Colorado River, to refill our Camelback water pouches and buy some food, and we got to the top of the South Rim by mid-afternoon.

I continued to do trail runs for many years after this epic outing, but this adventure, with a good friend, Jeff, remains my most memorable trail run.

I’ll always have that memory of standing on the edge of the canyon, at sunset, gazing at 2-billion-year-old metamorphic rocks turning purple and dark orange hues as the sun slowly slipped over the horizon.

Nothing ever truly lasts, but this news still fills me with sorrow. The country lost something special today that we will never have back.

(I published most of these photos 11 years earlier, and wanted to share them again with this memory of what is now gone forever: Grand Canyon Lodge.)

In celebration of running: something that totally changed my life

Today I read a story about someone I once knew who met a tragic fate. It was a piercing experience, as a whirlwind of memories came back to a time in my life when I made some absolutely critical life decisions how I wanted to pursue my precious time on this planet, how I wanted to be as a person, and what I wanted to achieve. Nothing turned my life around in the right direction more positively and more purposefully than running. Everything seemed to change after I picked up this activity that I continue to this day, despite gaggles of injuries over the years (who cares). It is wonderful to look back at critical moments and realize, excellent choice. Well done.

My smart choice was getting my first pair of terrible running shoes and hitting the pavement (I ran on pavement for years) when I was 15 years old, a sophomore in high school. All of this led to so many positive things, including being able to run across the Grand Canyon in September 2005 with an old UNC-CH grad school roommate, Jeff. Jeff did a rim-to-rim-to-rim (R2R2R) dash, south to north to south. I met him on the north rim and did an R2R. We lucked out and got a cabin just days before we were scheduled to run. We had perfect weather. Jeff and his family were gracious hosts to me in Flagstaff. And so funny to think, this kind of transformative event, with a phenomenal colleague, was the result of me deciding to do some smart things at the right time. Here’s to wisdom and rewards it may bring. Thank yourself for being smart. You may be smarter than you think.

Camera note: all of these are simple point and shoot photos taken with my consumer grade Canon digital. I punched up the contrast, a look I like. This post is more about the experience and emotions and less about the pixels and striving for art. (Click on each photo to see larger pictures in separate picture pages.)