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A woman at Yellowstone National Park ignored warnings and dipped her hand into a steaming hot spring.
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A video, captured by another visitor, showed the woman scrambling away after, shouting “It’s hot!”
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Hot springs have “injured or killed more people in Yellowstone than any other natural feature,” per the NPS.
A woman at Yellowstone National Park ignored warnings and dipped her hand into one of the park’s famous hot springs, only to scramble away in shock when she realized how hot the water was.
The entire incident was caught on video by another visitor and uploaded to the Instagram account TouronsofYellowstone.
The account, which takes its name from the words “tourist” and “moron,” is dedicated to posting videos of stupid and dangerous things that visitors do at Yellowstone National Park.
In the clip uploaded last Wednesday, a man and a woman can be seen standing by the edge of a hot spring after veering off the boardwalk.
“It’s stupid,” a man said in the background of the video.
As other visitors stared, the woman rolled up her sleeves, crouched on the ground, and tried to inch closer to the water.
When she realized she wasn’t able to reach it on her own, she held on to her companion’s arm for support. She then dipped her right hand into the pool of water that had steam rising off of it.
After touching the water, the woman quickly got to her feet and scrambled away from the hot spring, yelling, “It’s hot! It’s very hot!”
The video was accompanied by a caption from the original visitor who filmed the video.
“Ok, I would have called these people in but couldn’t find a ranger or service but here’s a guy and I’d presume his daughter at what I thought said Silex Spring in Fountain Paint Pot trail. I told him that was a bad idea and they shouldn’t get off the boardwalk. His response was ‘Whatever man.’ So I hit record,” the caption read.
As the National Park Service, or NPS, notes on its website, Silex Spring has an average temperate of 174.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 79.3 degrees Celsius, and last erupted in 2006.
The Flower Paint Pot trail is also part of Yellowstone’s still active volcano, and visitors are advised to “stay on the boardwalk at all times,” per the NPS.
Yellowstone National Park safety rules strictly prohibit activities such as touching, swimming, and soaking in the hot springs, stating that “hot springs have injured or killed more people in Yellowstone than any other natural feature.”
The US Geological Survey also named Yellowstone’s near-boiling hydrothermal waters as the park’s “gravest threat to visitors.”
More than 20 people have died from burns suffered after they entered or fell into Yellowstone’s hot springs, per the NPS.
In November 2016, a man from Oregon dissolved after he slipped into a Yellowstone hot spring while he was looking for a place to soak. When rescuers tried to retrieve his body the next day, they couldn’t find his remains, per CNN.
In October 2021, a 20-year-old woman suffered second-degree burns after she rushed into a hot spring at Yellowstone while trying to rescue her dog. The hot spring that she entered was known as Maiden’s Grave Spring, which has an average temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit, per NPS
In August last year, Insider reporter that a shoe with part of a foot still in it was found floating in the 53-foot-deep Abyss Pool in the West Thumb Geyser Basin area.
The Yellowstone National Park did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside of regular business hours.
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