Water advocate and ultra-runner Mina Guli is running with and for the Colorado River. The Australian native is experiencing the river one step at a time during a nearly 2,000-mile run designed to draw attention to one of the West’s most urgent water challenges. Her route included The Grand Canyon as well as the Kaibab National Forest.

Guli, founder of the Thirst Foundation, is tracing the Colorado River in under 100 days through her “Keep the River Running” campaign. The effort is intended to spotlight the worsening water crisis affecting more than 40 million people across seven U.S. states, 30 federally recognized Native American Tribes and parts of northern Mexico.

Her journey has taken her across some of the Colorado River Basin’s most challenging terrain. Among the most defining stretches was her run through the Grand Canyon, where extreme heat, early-morning starts, flooded river crossings and long, isolated miles turned the campaign from an endurance effort into a direct encounter with the river’s force and fragility.

“The Grand Canyon stripped everything back to the basics: keep moving, find water, stay cool, get through the next mile. Somewhere between the 1 a.m. starts, unbearable heat, flooded rivers and moments where I wondered whether I could keep going, I learned more about this river than I ever could have from a map or a report,” Guli told the Watchdog.

The Grand Canyon segment also underscored the broader purpose of the run: connecting the scale of the Colorado River crisis to the lived experience of moving through the basin itself. For Guli, each mile has become a way to elevate stories from communities, Tribes, farmers, cities and ecosystems that depend on the river during a period marked by decades of drought, overuse and increasing uncertainty.

Guli’s route also brought her to the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation in Parker where she joined the Mohave Runners and local community members for a brief stop during the campaign.

Guli will be attending a summit in Phoenix on September 1st and will later resume her run traveling from the Colorado River to Los Angeles.

Named one of Fortune’s 50 Greatest Leaders, Guli has built global campaigns around water awareness through the Thirst Foundation and Run Blue, using endurance running to bring public attention to water scarcity and the communities most affected by it. Through “Keep the River Running,” she is carrying that message along the Colorado River itself, inviting people to see the river not only as an essential resource, but as a shared responsibility.