Man killed at Yellowstone after falling into hot spring

The Morning Glory hot spring in Yellowstone National Park.

(Image credit: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 9 June 2016

On Wednesday, Yellowstone National Park officials confirmed that an Oregon man fell into a hot spring on Tuesday afternoon and was killed.

Colin Scott, 23, of Portland had left the boardwalk in the Norris Geyser Basin with his sister when he slipped and fell in a hot spring near Porkchop Geyser, officials said in a statement. His sister saw him fall into the hot spring, and alerted authorities; she was not injured. Park spokeswoman Charissa Reid said an effort to retrieve Scott's remains was called off on Wednesday once it was determined that "there were no remains to recover," The Associated Press reports. Many of the hot springs in the area are at or above 199 degrees.

Reid said the death was the first to occur in Norris Geyser Basin since 1898, and a total of 22 known deaths related to thermal features have happened since 1890. Visitors to the park are not allowed to leave the designated pathways in the thermal areas, and the off-path site where the incident took place "wasn't very secure," Reid said, adding, "We have regulations in place for a reason — they're here to protect the features in the park... they're also here to protect the people in the park."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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