What Happens in Yellowstone

There's a book in the Visitor Center Bookstores called Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park It tells a lot of the ways people have found to meet an untimely demise in the park. And back in ’05, we almost became a chapter in that book.

We worked the summer of 2005 for the Yellowstone Association in their flagship bookstore at Old Faithful. This was a great job, in part because we got to explore the park on our days off. One of our favorite things to do was hike around the Upper Geyser Basin. In May, we were just getting to know the park. On the day in question we took a side trail to see hidden pools and other cool things that the mainstream Old Faithful crowd probably doesn’t bother to see.

When you are hiking in Yellowstone, there are many rules to insure you leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but pictures. These rules protect the Park, but have the side benefit of keeping you alive. Two rules top that list: don’t get near the wildlife and stay on the path. We never had a problem with these rules, but, like I said, we were just getting to know the park.

Near the end of our hike, as we headed towards Daisy Geyser, we came around a bend to see a big old male bison standing very close to the trail and another bison laying down pretty much on the trail a few feet from the first one. While bison might seam like shaggy cows, we knew that they would have no problem trampling or goring us if we disturbed them. In Yellowstone you here about people being injured or killed each year from bison encounters. Most of these are because people think they can go up and pet the bison or set their kids on top to take a picture. There are incidence when the bison just get pissed and take it out on something. We had even seen the damage to one of our friend’s car when a buffalo decided it was parked in the wrong spot and rammed it. Try to explain that to your insurance adjuster.

So we stayed a respectful distance away and sat down on some fallen logs to hang out with a Yellow-Bellied Marmot while we decided the best course of action to get around the bison. We entertained the thought of going back the way we came, but being human, and debatably stupid, we didn't want to turn around and go all the way back the way we had come. What to do?

What was that other rule? Oh yeah: STAY ON THE PATH.

Sure we knew the rule. Working with the Park Rangers, we had heard in graphic detail about the dangers of straying off the paths. But, we had bison in our path. And, to our left, there was a lone elk resting way off across a nice, grassy, bison-free field. It didn't look so bad. It had a lot of fallen trees from the '88 fire, and we thought that would impede charging buffalo, so why not just veer off the path a little bit to the left?

That plan started out fine. We jumped over the trees, and went over a small hill down onto the nice, flat field. The field was muddy from snowmelt and we could see hoof prints from a herd that had passed through, so we figured it was safe. We made it past the buffalo and were veering back onto the path when the ground fell from beneath our feet. Literally.

Sue took a step and she was suddenly sucked into the ground up to her thighs. I grabbed her hand and started to pull her out, but one step and the earth swallowed me up to my waist. Sue said she panicked a little when she tried to shift her left foot down deep in the muck and nothing would move.

We should have died there. Most of these bogs in Yellowstone are thermal, and if this one had been, we would have been cooked as we sunk into the muck. Luck was with us and this was just some horrible, deep, muddy, sludgy, goo that was trying to suck us down. As to how we escaped, all we can figure is that we had both read something about escaping quicksand, because when instinct kicked in, we relaxed and spread out across the surface, half crawling/half swimming onto firmer land.

As we gathered our wits, we slowly made our way back to the path, feeling very soggy, cold and stupid. As we squished towards the boardwalks, I could swear I heard a buffalo laughing.

By the time we reached the populated areas of the boardwalk, we had braced ourselves for someone to ask what the hell happened. But to the people's credit (the folks who walked past us on our muddy walk of shame back home), no one asked us. We had our speech all planned, though, just in case: "What happens in Yellowstone stays in Yellowstone."