Yes, I said Darwin Awards. Now, I'm not going to blame the 3 year old who fell into a hot pool in one of the geyser basins, 3 year olds are by nature ignorant of the world and in that case the blame lies with the adults that should have been holding onto the kid, but most of the deaths are due in part or wholly to stupidity, lack of common sense, and failure to heed warnings.
The book is organized into various categories, like "thermal features" (hot springs, geysers, mud pots, etc.", animals in general, bears specifically, lightning, clouds of poisonous gas... the latter of which, surprisingly, do NOT have a documented human fatality although there are plenty of documented cases of animals both large and small lying around dead for no visible reason.
I haven't even reached the second half of the book, which is humans causing human deaths (murder, accidental shootings, death from human-caused fire, carbon monoxide poisoning - because naturally occurring clouds of hydrogen sulfide and asphyxiating carbon dioxide aren't enough fun, I guess, missing and presumed dead, etc).
Now, to begin with, the area is loaded with what I'd call "warning label" names. Names that lend a sinister air to the geography and imply Bad Things Have Happened Here. Names like "Death Valley" - which, by the way, is not a part of Yellowstone although Yellowstone does have "Death Gulch". Here's a picture of it, taken in 1899. Three guesses why it's called "Death Gulch". By the way, the lumps of fur used to be bears and no, the gentleman in the picture did not kill them, he just found them.
The point being, there are a LOT of warning names in the area, like "Stinkingwater River", "Firehole River", "Colter's Hell" (I have no idea who Colter is or was), "Devil's Den", "Black Dragon Cauldron" and yeah, "Death Gulch". Reading about various incidents makes it sound like people were walking through a high-level end-zone in a MMORPG. Given that this is a book full of fatal incidents maybe there's some truth in that, although in the "reality game" hot lava is MORE than hot and there's no resurrection option.
Given that the books is organized by means of demise I think I'll go that route, too.
Geothermal Features: The Land and Water Are Not Friendly
As mentioned, a "geothermal feature" is a mix of heat, water, and sometimes mud. Geysers, hotsprings, mudholes... Yellowstone has a ridiculous number of these, allegedly half of the entire number that exist in the world. These aren't always obvious, some of them covered with thin crusts that will not support your weight, some of them smallish in size, some "hidden" in other waters - the Firehole River is riddled with these (maybe that's the origin of the name?) both along the banks and in the river itself. Once upon a time fishermen use to dunk fish, still on the line, into Fisherman's Hole, a hot spring in the middle of a lake that is otherwise quite congenial, to cook their fish. Park authorities have banned fishing in a lot of these areas, which has reduced the number of people coming to grief by accidentally stepping into these things. Which has killed at least one person who wasn't as cautious as he needed to be while fishing from shore.
Some names aren't so obvious. The name "Belgium Pool" doesn't sound too bad until you learned it was named after a foreign visitor from Belgium who fell into it and died.
If it wasn't for the fact of horrible suffering and death, some of the stuff that has gone on around these things would be comical - distracted people stepping backward into doom, people falling into one boiling puddle only to leap up and immediately fall forward or backward into another hotpot/mudhole/geyser/whatever... In this chapter we learn that it is possible to fall into body of literally boiling water, receive third degree burns over 100% of your body in minute if not seconds, then get out and stumble around literally screaming for a bit, perhaps even running around screaming, then linger hours or a day or so before finally succumbing to one's injuries. Screaming while in such a pool is ill-advised, as the water getting into your mouth or throat will literally burn on the way down, thereby allowing you receive third degree burns of greater extent than merely your entire exterior surface. Yes, that has happened. I'm beginning to wonder if the Salt Lake City burn unit has a dedicated wing for Yellowstone victims, it's not just the deceased, a lot more people are injured but not killed by this landscape.
Now, the author does talk about how NOT to die, which can be broken down into simple rules:
- Warning signs apply to everyone, yes, even you.
- Stay on the boardwalk. We really mean it.
- Don't bring your dog. Especially, don't bring a dog without a leash. It is illegal to have a dog in Yellowstone that isn't on a leash, and you're not supposed to have them in the geothermal areas at all. Dogs get excited and run off and fall through the thin surface or jump into pools or try to drink from them or otherwise do dog things that, in most parts of the world, aren't lethal. In Yellowstone, those things can kill your dog. To say nothing of dog-hating wildlife. Dogs get into hot pools and die. A certain number of humans have died trying to rescue a dog from these places. It didn't end well. And most likely you won't get your dog back because it doesn't take long to render a dog into dog stew. Or people into stew. After one person fell into a hot pool the park report stated that the next day, less than 24 hours later, "eight pounds of meat, bone, and clothing were recovered". That's it. Keep your dog (and you) out of nature's not-so-slow cooker, m'kay? Did I mention that some of these pools are also acidic? Yes, boiling pools of acid. Welcome to Yellowstone, isn't is awesome?
- Hold onto your children. Literally. I know this suggestion will horrify some people but consider putting your kid on a leash. Over the years 8 kids have died horribly in these areas, almost all of them instances of young children running off/away from adults (one child might have been knocked backward into a pool by a distracted adult).
- Don't wander around in the dark. This has claimed more than one person. In fact, it once resulted in the only multiple-person burn incident in the park's history. Three employees out at night all managed to fall into the same pool at the same time. One death, two very badly burned survivors who spent months recovering from burns from shoulders to feet. No one knew what the fuck happened for months until the two survivors came out of their comas.
- Don't go swimming in hot pools. Some of them are safe. Most of them are not. Figure out how we know this.
- Don't go swimming in hot pools or the Firehole River, or the Stinkingwater River (note the names), or really ANYWHERE in Yellowstone at night which combines the hazards of the two prior points into one.
About 19 or 20 (some ambiguity, at least one of the "missing and presumed dead" cases is likely a geothermal death but with no body or parts or other evidence it's unproven) people have died in the geothermal features since the mid-19th Century. A lot more have been injured, some permanently. Some survivors/families have sued. In general, even in the lawsuit-happy US, they don't win. Yellowstone and the US government are not going to be held accountable for this sort of thing, especially given that there are warning signs and frequent cautions by park personnel (not that that has prevented employees from getting killed). Of course, people who watch their loved ones being literally boiled alive, or watch them linger for hours or days after getting burned before they finally die, are understandably emotional, they want to blame some one or some thing. There's a lot of survivor guilt. In one case, a man who was an industrial chemist sued the US government over the death of his child for not providing sufficient warning. The judge threw out the case, stating that in addition to the park warnings at entry to both the park and geothermal area and cautions not to leave the paths a professional chemist should have been tipped off by the rotten-egg smell in the area (low levels of hydrogen sulfide) and the pools of boiling liquid in the area that there was danger in the vicinity. Yes, the death was tragic. But it was no one's fault (unless you want to argue negligent parent(s)).
Bottom line - the area is pretty but dangerous. STAY ON THE BOARDWALK!
Amazingly, no one has been killed by looking into a geyser hole just before eruption. A dozen or so have been burned doing that, but while they've had their faces/heads scalded no one has actually died from a geyser eruption. That we know about.
) was a Finn who went by the name Jacob Hess (huh... sounds Finnish? Also described by one account as a "Russian Finlander") in 1884. After getting good and drunk in Gardiner Hess and six buddies were sleighing back to Mammoth Hot Springs when an avalanche overturned them, the sleigh, and the horse. When everything came to a halt four of them got themselves out of the snow, dug two of the others out in time, but didn't get to Hess before he suffocated under the snow. Which, for being in the middle of the night in the wilderness with everyone drunk off their ass probably wasn't the worst possible outcome but still too bad for Hess.
