Global Courant
A tourist ignored another visitor’s warning and dipped her fingers into a deadly boiling spring in Yellowstone National Park, video footage shows.
The video, posted to the @TouronsofYellowstone Instagram account on Tuesday, June 20, shows two tourists walking by the edge of a steaming hot spring with the pedestrian promenade behind it.
Spectators watch from the boardwalk as the tourist crouches on her hands and knees at the edge of the spring and reaches out to touch the steam boiling from the surface.
The person filming grumbles to a nearby visitor that it’s “stupid”.
The tourist then grabs the other person’s hand and bends over to dip the tip of her shoe and her fingers into the boiling water, the video shows.
She recoils and tries to get up, away from the well. She runs back to the boardwalk shouting, “It’s hot!” It’s very warm!”
The Instagram user who originally posted the video wrote in the caption that they “would have called these people,” but they couldn’t find a ranger and had no cell service.
The poster captured the video at Silex Spring in the Fountain Paint Pot Area.
“I told him that was a bad idea and they shouldn’t go off the boardwalk,” the poster said in the video’s caption. “His response was ‘whatever man’. So I got a record.
Yellowstone National Park officials did not respond to McClatchy News’ request for information.
Yellowstone hot springs
Spring has an average temperature of 174 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Park Service. It floods most of the year and last erupted in 2006.
Silex Spring is located in the Fountain Paint Pot Area, which runs along several hydrothermal features past Yellowstone’s “still active volcano.”
A National Park Service web page about the trail says there is thermal activity throughout the area and warns pedestrians to stay on the boardwalk at all times.
That’s not for nothing. A Park Service web page about Silex Spring encourages visitors to think about how the hot water came to the surface to start with.
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“Deep beneath your feet, the heat from the molten rock of the Earth’s interior is conducted upward through the solid rock of the Earth’s crust,” says the National Park Service. “Groundwater circulating through these rocks is heated and follows cracks and fissures upwards. Where the hot water can escape to the earth’s surface, a hot spring is created.”
Part of one last year human foot in a shoe was spotted in one of the park’s deepest hot springs, McClatchy News previously reported.
Researchers believe the foot belonged to someone who fell or went into the Abyss Pool on the morning of July 31.
There have been more people injured or killed in the park’s hot springs than any other natural feature, rangers say.
In October 2021, a 20-year-old woman suffered severe burns after colliding with a hot spring to save her dog, McClatchy News previously reported. The dog died of his injuries.
The month before had a 19-year-old third degree burns more than 5% of her body after visiting the Old Faithful geyser.
2016, a man may be decomposed after trying to soak in a thermal area, a practice known as “hot potting.” Workers couldn’t find any remains and park rangers believe he dissolved in the deadly hot water.
“The soil in hydrothermal areas is fragile and thin, and there is boiling water just below the surface,” park rangers said at the time. “Everyone should stay on boardwalks and trails and be extremely careful of thermal features.”
Part of a foot — in a shoe — found floating in Yellowstone’s hot springs, park rangers say
The foot found in Yellowstone’s hot spring belonged to a California man, park rangers say
Man may have dissolved after falling into the red-hot Yellowstone spring
