The Lesson From Yellowstone's Latest Visitor Death: Don't Leave the Trail

Surprisingly, the number of deaths in the hot springs since Yellowstone’s opening as a park has been relatively low: 22 fatalities in 126 years. This is in part because the Park is very good at marking trails and making safe boardwalks which visitors can walk on. It’s when visitors leave the trails that people start to die.

And unfortunately, this is happening more and more frequently. Yellowstone is seeing a record amount of visitors (which is a good thing), so more visitors are leaving the trails and approaching wildlife. Yellowstone officials have expressed their frustration: “The rules in the park aren’t just arbitrary,” a spokeswoman for Yellowstone said. “They’re really here to protect people who are visiting the park and the things that they’re here to see.”

The geysers are so dangerous that the park has called off a recovery effort, saying that there is no part of the body that can safely be removed. Part of the problem is that there’s literally a volcano underneath the rocks in the area, and sometimes, the rocks beneath searchers’ feet is just a thin fragile layer above boiling water and earth.

If you plan on visiting Yellowstone (and you should, it’s a truly gorgeous place that’s like nowhere else on earth), please: follow the rules and guidelines. Stay on the trails. If you leave them, the best case scenario is that you damage part of one of our most precious ecosystems. The worst case scenario is that you die a really horrible death.