MSNBC article: Webcam catches tourists walking on Old Faithful
Yeah, right. What a bunch of morons. What’s really bizarre is that they got caught because someone in Wisconsin was watching the park’s webcam and called in to report it.
They are just lucky they didn’t get burned literally. I recall reading a report about a guy jumping in a pool to save his dog that jumped it. They basically both got half boiled alive, dieing a short time later. A horrible way to go.
I participated in the [del]rescue[/del] incident. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Snopes article.
BTW, he wasn’t in much pain.
And then their heirs would sue the government and settle out of court. :rolleyes:
Did he know he was going to die?
You know, I remember reading about this when it happened, though I don’t remember reading your post. It has haunted me for years. I am glad he was not in much pain, but what was he thinking after the fact?
The one that sticks in my mind is the three idiots who went for an illegal tub soak, in the dark of night no less. They were Park employees and were well aware of the dangers, prohibitions, posted warnings, and fences.
After the bath, they picked their way back to camp/hotel in the dark. They didn’t have a flashlight.
Found themselves back at a warm creek that they’d jumped over on the way in, joined hands and jumped over all together. Into a near-boiling pool. They’d lost their bearings in the dark and weren’t where they thought. All three were killed. For their sake, one hopes it didn’t take long.
Breathtaking stupidity, if I’m remembering this story accurately.
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Wow. I remember reading the snopes article about that years ago and being very disturbed by it. The extra details you gave make it sound even worse than I imagined. Even though it’s merciful that he wasn’t in pain, I’m sure that it was pretty traumatic for everyone who had to see him like that.
I can’t imagine how the friend whose dog started it all felt.
Looks like a Darwin Award waiting to happen
Was he conscious and speaking, or is there some other way to determine pain level when the person is non-responsive?
Third degree burns are not painful as the nerves have been destroyed.
It’s the surrounding tissue with second degree burns that provide the pain.
It may not be so bizarre. All April the Wisconsin public television has been playing over and over the John Muir documentary which includes a ton of Yellowstone material. They might have decided to check out Yellowstone because of that. The troups used to make the tourists that wrote on Old Faithful clean up their mess. This is something I think all vandals should be required to do.
Where did you hear that. It sounds like an urban legend only because if they all went swimming, all got out, all got lost, all jumped back in, all realized too late they all jumped into the wrong pool and all died…who told the story? Also, the joined hands part is what really makes it sounds fake. Like a glorious suicide pact.
ISTM if this was true what we would have heard was “Three park rangers went swimming in a hot spring and burned to death” and not the first part. Of course, I guess it’s possible that there was a fourth person that stayed back and said “Hey guys, I don’t think this is the same pool”.
There have been quite a few hydrothermal-related fatalities in Yellowstone. The very first chapter of Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park is called “Hold Fast To Your Children: Death in Hot Water”.
The last time I was in Yellowstone was about two years ago and people were still doing stupid things like walking out on those crusts where warning signs are clearly posted. And the usual morons are still throwing fucking coins into glory holes and damaging them irreparably. It’s infuriating.
He’s quoted in the Snopes article, so he was talking.
Not that I’m in the habit of throwing anything into a natural wonder, much less literally throwing money away, but how does throwing a coin into a glory hole damage it?
It eventually gets wedged/cemented down in there somewhere. Enough people do that and pretty soon the hole ain’t the size it used to be. How a hot pool and particularly gysers behave are dependent on the hole size/geometry for their characteristics. Change the hole size and you change them. If you manage to pretty much plug the hole you’ve fucked it up. And given the nature of the hole, it aint like somebody is going to get in there and clean it out. And of course rocks are just as bad if not worse because they are usually bigger.
Oh, and coins in pools or mudpots are going to contaminate them with the metals the coin is made of.
An I mean the generic you, not the Broomstick you 
That bit of logic never occurred to me, and now you’ve got me wondering if I swallowed an urban legend.
I’ve seen the story more than once but can’t remember where. I’ll see if I can find verification somewhere.
Back later.
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Well, that didn’t take long. What I had mis-remembered is that two of the three idiots survived.
(From this website:
www.yellowstonepark.com/moretoknow/shownewsdetails.aspx?newsid=41)
Writing his 1995 book Death in Yellowstone, park historical archivist Lee H. Whittlesey sifted through National Park Service records to identify 19 human fatalities from falling into thermal features. The victims include seven young children who slipped away from parents, teenagers who fell through thin surface crust, fishermen who inadvertently stepped into hot springs near Yellowstone Lake, and park concession employees who illegally took “hot pot” swims in thermal pools.
<snip>
The most recent thermal fatality occurred in 2000. One moonless August night, 20-year-old Sara Hulphers, a park concession employee from Oroville, Washington, went swimming with friends in the Firehole River. Accompanied by two co-workers for Old Faithful businesses, Hulphers returned by hiking through Lower Geyser Basin. They carried no flashlights, and the three thought they were jumping a small stream when they fell into Cavern Spring’s ten-foot-deep boiling waters. Hulphers went completely underwater and died several hours later from third-degree burns that covered her entire body. Her companions survived, but the two men spent months in a Salt Lake City hospital recovering from severe burns over most of their bodies.
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Well, one point in favor of the story is that if it was a boiling hot pool, the three people are NOT going to jump in sequentially. One would think once the first one is screaming bloody murder, the other two aren’t going to follow. So they would likely jump at very close to the same time (and perhaps holding hands if AT the same time).
Or it could be one or two jumped in first and the last died trying to save the first.
Yeah, there as some details in the story that would not likely be KNOWN as fact, but they would be reasonable educated guesses, and more importantly it certainly would be possible for three folks with some bad luck and poor thinking skills to pull off a tragedy like that.
Okay, sounds like the source story has been found.