A visitor to Yellowstone National Park nearly got into extremely hot water after filming himself touching a boiling geothermal pool. The man, who hasn't been named, has been condemned after sharing the video of the incident online.
In the clip (which you can watch below), the man has strayed off the boardwalk designed to keep park visitors safe, and crouches by the bubbling pool to tap the surface. As some commenters remarked, he could easily have slipped on the loose ground, or fallen through the thin crust into the scalding hot groundwater.
The video was shared on Instagram account TouronsOfYellowstone, which highlights bad behavior at US National Parks and other sites of natural beauty. Many of the incidents involve wildlife (such as tourists taunting elk and trying to pet bison), but sometimes people decide to play in hot springs or beside canyons.
Yellowstone is built around its geothermal water features, and there are plenty of measures in place to keep visitors safe while they enjoy the sights, but some people have died after ignoring the warning signs and getting too close.
In July last year, a park worker discovered a foot floating in the Abyss Pool. It was identified as belonging to a 79-year-old Los Angeles man named Il Hun Ro, whose vehicle was found abandoned in a parking lot, but it's still not known how he ended up in the water.
In 2016, an Oregon man named Colin Scott died after slipping into Yellowstone's hottest water feature, the Norris Geyser Basin. Scott and his sister were looking for a warm pool to soak in when he fell into the searing hot, acidic water.
As Huffpost reported at the time, the operation to recover his body was delayed by bad weather. By the next day, all that remained was a pair of melted flip-flops.
