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Two tourists were filmed walking dangerously close to Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, despite official warnings about the lethal risks posed by the park’s thermal features.
According to Cowboy State Daily, the incident happened Sunday evening at the world-famous hot spring. The outlet reported that Montana resident Tanya Saueressig captured video of two women walking across the fragile microbial mats near the spring, rather than staying on the designated boardwalk. Saueressig told the outlet she first thought the figures could not be people, before realizing the pair were moving toward the scalding water.
According to the outlet, the women appeared to have approached from the direction of the Fairy Falls Trail and were seen walking along the edge of Grand Prismatic Spring, taking selfies. Saueressig said she feared they could fall through the thin crust or into the spring, adding that she worried people watching from nearby might witness someone die.
Newsweek reached out to the NPS for comment via email.
Yellowstone Hot Springs Have Killed More Than 20 People
Yellowstone National Park officials warn visitors that thermal areas can be deadly, even when the ground appears safe. The National Park Service says the ground around thermal features “may look solid,” but can be only “a thin crust with super-heated water below.” Visitors are instructed to “always walk on boardwalks and designated trails” and to keep children close in thermal areas.
The park’s guidance on geysers and hot springs also states that boardwalks and trails exist to protect both visitors and delicate thermal formations.
“Water in hot springs can cause severe or fatal burns,” the NPS says, adding that “scalding water underlies most of the thin, breakable crust around hot springs.”
Grand Prismatic Spring is located in the Midway Geyser Basin. The NPS describes the area as home to “perhaps the most photographed hot spring” in Yellowstone, and notes that visitors can view Grand Prismatic from the boardwalk and from the nearby overlook trail.
Official death figures underline the danger. Yellowstone’s safety guidance says more than 20 people have died from burns after entering or falling into the park’s hot springs.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s Yellowstone Volcano Observatory has also said park records attribute hundreds of visitor injuries and more than 20 deaths to thermal burns, noting that hydrothermal features have caused more harm than any other natural threat in Yellowstone.
Tourists Can Face Jail for Leaving Yellowstone Boardwalks
Walking off boardwalks in Yellowstone thermal areas can also bring legal penalties.
In April, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming said a Texas man was sentenced to five days in jail after pleading guilty to walking off a designated boardwalk in a Yellowstone thermal area.
Prosecutors said he walked on fragile and dangerous hydrothermal features at Mammoth Hot Springs, and U.S. Attorney Darin Smith warned that Yellowstone’s thermal areas are “among the most dangerous natural features in the world.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Robinson and Tony Phillips
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