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Part of a human foot, inside a shoe, found floating in a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park this week appears to be linked to a July death, the National Park Service said Friday.
A Wyoming park employee found the foot Tuesday in Abyss Pool, part of the West Thumb Geyser Basin in the southern part of the park.
Officials said they believe the discovery is related to a July 31 death there and that foul play was not involved. The park service declined to provide additional information about the ongoing investigation.
The basin and its parking lot were temporarily closed to visitors after the foot was found, but have since reopened.
The death joins more than 20 deaths at Yellowstone’s hot springs since 1890. Before July, the most recent fatality was in 2016, when a 23-year-old man went off a boardwalk and fell into Norris Geyser Basin, the hottest hot spring. region in the park. In 2000, a person died after falling into a hot spring in the Lower Geyser Basin.
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There have also been at least eight injuries in the past six years, including a 3-year-old boy who in 2020 ran outside, slipped and fell into a hot spring. Last year, a woman was burned from the shoulders to the feet after entering Maiden’s Grave Spring to rescue her dog, which had jumped out.
Although people sometimes jump into hot springs on purpose, most injuries and deaths at hydrothermal features are the result of accidents.
“The thought of boiling to death in a hot spring is truly terrifying to any rational person,” wrote Lee H. Whittlesey in his 1995 book, “Death in Yellowstone.”
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The number of spring-related incidents is miniscule, given that Yellowstone is the oldest national park, founded in 1872, and one of the busiest in the national park system. The number of visitors to the park rose to nearly 5 million last year, the busiest year on record, representing a 28 percent increase from the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. However, this year’s damaging floods have reduced the number dramatically.
Visitors to Yellowstone are also occasionally injured or killed by wildlife, such as bison or bears, when they get too close. In June, a man was gored in the arm by a bison bull after his family didn’t leave the area when the animal started running. The same week, a 71-year-old woman was injured when a bison attacked her after she and her daughter accidentally approached it.
Yellowstone has more than 10,000 hydrothermal features, of which hot springs are the most common. They form when rain seeps through bedrock, is superheated by magma, and rises back to the surface. Convection currents circulate the water, preventing it from getting hot enough to cause an eruption.
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Abyss Pool, where the foot was found this week, is one of the deepest hot springs in the park, at more than 50 feet. It has a temperature of about 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
To stay safe around the hot springs, visitors should stay on boardwalks and trails, the park service said. He warned that the ground near the thermal features is fragile and that there is boiling water below the surface.