You might think features like pools of bubbling acid and hidden booby traps are safely relegated to the imaginary world of Indiana Jones. But in Yellowstone, they’re real. And they’re taking out tourists at a pretty astonishing rate. Just this week, a park visitor suffered third-degree burns after the ground gave way beneath her, dropping her into a pool of scalding-hot water hidden just beneath the surface.

The visitor, a 60-year-old woman from New Hampshire, was hiking off-trail near Old Faithful, the iconic geyser famous for its sky-tickling jet of 350°F steam. She was accompanied by her husband and dog. They didn’t realize how thin the ground was—or what was lurking beneath the delicate crust.

With one misstep, the hiker punched through the thin ground, falling and plunging one leg into the near-boiling water beneath. Her husband and dog remained uninjured. The group was able to self-evacuate to a nearby medical clinic, but the woman was ultimately airlifted to a hospital for further treatment. A from the National Park Service stated that incident remains under investigation. In the meantime, park officials remind all visitors to stay on designated trails and boardwalks.

While this is Yellowstone’s first hydrothermal injury of 2024, it’s not the year’s first close call. Earlier this summer, five visitors accidentally drove their car into a geyser and had to be rescued. Just two weeks after that, a sudden hydrothermal explosion sent hot water and rocks raining from the sky and left panicked visitors running for cover. Some of the stones were up to three feet across and weighed 100 pounds—enough to in the area.

According to the National Park Service, more people have been injured by Yellowstone’s hydrothermal springs than any of the park’s other natural threats. Hot springs-related injuries currently number in the hundreds, and at least by the scalding water. That’s nearly three times as many deaths as those attributed to bear attacks— over the park’s recorded history. Bison attacks happen from time to time, but only two bison-related deaths have been recorded.

In fact, the USGS has called the park’s geothermal springs “.” However, the park points out that not all burns or deaths are the result of accidents. On more than one occasion, an off-leash dog has taken a flying leap into a pool, and its owners have plunged into the near-boiling water to attempt a rescue. Other visitors ignore posted signage to get closer to the water for photo-ops—only to be surprised by a burst of steam.

While burns certainly make memorable souvenirs, the park tends to recommend a distanced selfie instead.

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Seattle’s Vertical World and Colorado-based manufacturer C3, which produces Perfect Descent auto belays, have settled in a lawsuit following a severe climbing accident that occurred on August 1, 2019. The climber, Michael Vandivere, sustained a 30-foot fall and subsequently suffered a number of severe injuries, including 12 pelvic fractures, a traumatic brain injury, lung injuries, bladder laceration, and other fractures. C3 Manufacturing has agreed to pay $5 million and Vertical World will pay an additional $1 million.

The law office representing Vandivere, Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala Attorneys at Law, stated in a that Vandivere fell “due to a defective auto-belay device.” Furthermore, the press release stated that the accident was caused by “improper supervision by Vertical World staff, and inadequate training for climbers by Vertical World. Despite using the device properly, the climber fell when the auto-belay device failed to function as intended.”

However, Vertical World issued its own , which began: “the statement [from PCVA] is incomplete, misleading, and incorrect in several fundamental respects.” Rich Johnston, the president and owner of Vertical World, spoke with Climbing, saying that it seems the climber failed to fully clip into the auto belay. A witness, according to Johnston, reported that they saw Vandivere attempt to clip in before heading up the route. A closed and intact carabiner was found at the top of the device. Johnston added that “in the three years that I dealt with this lawsuit, they never proved any failure on the belay device that we had in our facility.”

Early on, Vertical World’s insurance company wanted to settle, but Johnston refused. In an interview with Climbing, Johnston said, “If you start rolling over on stuff like this, the industry is going to be hit.” Things changed during the discovery process of the suit.

It was found that Perfect Descent auto belays were initially recalled in 2016, with documented defects dating back to 2015. The company issued “stop use” and “return for repair notices,” however effective design changes were allegedly not implemented. Further recalls were issued in the subsequent years. According to Darrell Cochran, the lead attorney representing Vandivere, other grievous incidents have occurred since then.

“My understanding is that very similar defect issues led to deaths in a number of places, including Colorado and Australia,” Cochran told Climbing. “C3 Manufacturing likely disputes that its product was responsible for the falls.”

Johnston countered, saying, “C3 did some really questionable things in their engineering of the products and how they did things. But as far as I know, no one was injured on a C3 product due to a failure that is claimed by the plaintiff—they’ve had millions of cycles on their units over the years in the industry. It says that they just didn’t do things correctly.”

The latest states that the defective devices can “loosen and cause slack on the rope, allowing the climber to fall [to the ground].” Cochran clarified to Climbing that there were issues “with break failure and a failed retraction spring that led to hazardous spooling.” He added that the president of C3, Ronald Naranjo, testified that the design used to create Perfect Descent was based on a device manufactured but later abandoned by the Mine Safety Appliances Company—an organization by which Naranjo was previously employed. That device, the Red Point Descender, was after multiple climbers experienced a rapid descent.

Despite the recalls, Perfect Descent has long been seen as a reputable brand in the industry—the company is the official supplier to the IFSC and World Games. Climbing was unable to reach C3 for comment.

Although Johnston was steadfastly against settling, misconduct from C3’s attorney’s during the legal proceedings made that ever more difficult. After it was revealed that the team had withheld evidence in the lead up to trial, the judge imposed sanctions of nearly $300,000 on C3 and the attorneys. Following the fumble, C3’s insurance company agreed to settle. Johnston found himself in an uncomfortable position; going to court alone was no longer a viable option, so Vertical World settled too.

Johnston founded Vertical World in a warehouse in Seattle in 1987. It was America’s first commercial climbing gym. In 1994, he also served as one of the original board members for the Climbing Wall Association. Ironically, Johnston has been pushing for better auto belay practices for years. At first reluctant to host auto belays in his gyms, he compromised with a stringent and required belay check that all members who wish to use the auto belays must undergo. Following this lawsuit, Johnston says Vertical World will continue to have auto belays, but not any manufactured by C3.

As a longtime industry leader, Johnston recommends other gym owners pay attention to this lawsuit. He’s concerned about how, moving forward, insurance companies will look at gyms which host auto belays. “I think that’s going to be a problem,” he said. Garnet Moore, the executive director of the Climbing Wall Association, has been in communication with Johnston and is putting together updated risk management guidelines for the industry.

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Mile marker 120, 4 p.m. on a Sunday. Three of us were heading home to Western Colorado after a great climbing and camping trip to Maple Canyon, the Uinta National Forest, Utah. The drive is about six hours, much of it on I-70 with posted speeds of 80. It’s a beautiful, big-horizon route, cutting through the San Rafael Swell with its overlapping fins and upthrust white-rock formations named Ghost Rock or Temple Mountain.

On a straightaway 40 miles west of Green River, the halfway mark on the trip, we drove into a curtain of rain just ahead of a blind curve. Through sudden hard splats on the dusty windshield I spotted a man on the shoulder to our left, in front of a bluff wall. He was violently waving downward, over and over. He had a beard, a white T-shirt. No rain jacket.

“Slow way down,” I said to my husband, Mike Benge, already starting to brake. “Way down.”

We decelerated around the curve onto an eighth- or quarter-mile hill. In front of us were two lines of cars at a full stop on the highway, with ahead a chaos of flung vehicles. They were semi trucks.

All I could think of was my friend Laura Kirk’s husband, Dave Carpenter, who came along on I-70 in winter, slowed to a stop upon seeing an accident ahead, and said to a coworker, “I think we’re going to be here awhile.” Just then they were hit from behind and spun completely around. (They were somehow uninjured; the car was totaled.)

“Pull over to the shoulder,” I urged, and we swerved off.

The rain was now hammering; cars behind us were also braking hard. We heard the first siren.

In probably five minutes the line of backed-up cars stretched up the hill and around the curve, so that taillights would at least be visible to approaching highway traffic. About 20 cars ahead of us was a four-semi pile up, with glass and metal pieces strewn for hundreds of feet on the highway.

“We were probably three or four minutes behind it,” our friend Jim Gilchrist said from the back seat.

More sirens; pounding rain. It poured in thick noisy gushers over the nearby banks, outward onto the road. When the torrents eased, I left the truck, tried to ask around for information. A helicopter arrived, circled, landed.

We saw rescue vehicles arrive, the Jaws of Life carried down the hill: one set, and behind it another. Somehow, only one person was injured, we were told; but he would have to be cut out from his truck.

The truck must have come around onto the suddenly greasy hill and skidded; the truck behind him couldn’t stop in time; and a third one managed to pull over but was hit by the fourth, which ripped the third open in massive glancing blows all down its side.

We were to wait there for a long five hours. By providence no cars or citizen pickups (like the one we were in) were tossed around in the mayhem. Grateful to have been those few minutes behind the pileup, and for a guy who thought fast, bolted up the hill, and stood out in the rain to warn others, I asked people who he was to try thank him. No one knew.

I can still picture him in a T shirt, though I may be wrong that it was white. In any rain, you get soaked and cold immediately. He saw the implications and instantly acted. I’m certain he prevented other crashes, and I wonder if he saved lives. We’d have all come around the bend at highway speeds to rows of stopped cars.

People milled around, walked their dogs. Mike, Jim, and I met others; I talked to the woman driving the third truck, which had been hit. “It’s such a random group, thrown together for hours,” Mike said. We shared food from our coolers, asked for information as possible from a doctor who had walked down to the site to see if he could help.

I only knew that the driver was in his 40s or older, not young and inexperienced, as many truckers seemed to have been in recent accidents on I-70. The interstate, for many a line to recreation—hiking, skiing, rafting, climbing—is crowded and beset by heavy weather.

Finally the helicopter flew away with the injured driver, all of us watching in fraught silence as it diminished and disappeared.

“He’ll be there in 20 minutes,” Mike said. I thought of how my old roommate, a critical-care nurse, always said the hospital in Grand Junction was excellent. Finally cars began moving in a slow roll, and we passed the truck, now missing its entire front end, and drove the four hours home.

In the next few days, I found two short news items, and at least saw nothing about a fatality. I asked a friend in the medical field, who was able to discern that the driver had many injuries but should survive. That was all we knew.

That was in July of 2022. It was my sixth or seventh trip to Maple, with Mike and, when they were younger, our kids, or with friends and more friends and their dogs. I’ve been again since, and will always think of that accident at Green River.

I am originally from Annapolis, Maryland, and was there in the early winter of 1982 when a Boeing 737-222, Air Florida Flight 90, took off out of Washington, D.C., in a snowstorm, and crashed into the 14th Street Bridge and the ice-covered Potomac River, breaking into pieces.

The fatality toll was 78, including four people in vehicles on the bridge and 74 from the plane. Five people—four passengers and a single crew member—from the flight survived, rescued from the river. Another person was in the water, but at least once when a rescue helicopter arrived, he passed the lifeline to others. When the chopper came back, he had gone under.

We in the region waited, appalled by the news and images, wondering who the man had been. For a time no one could say. But I remember that co workers of Arland Williams, age 46, believed it was congruent with what they knew of him. For a time there was even something mystical in not knowing: a sense that maybe we could attribute the best in human nature to anyone there.

Eventually Williams’s body was retrieved, and, while it is hard to know what happened, he was identified as the only passenger who died of drowning.

I’d like to think the guy in the white T shirt could be any of us. I’d be willing, but doubt I’d have thought that fast. Maybe now I would, and that, too, is thanks to him.

It is now the summer of 2024. The above story appeared one year ago, after a subsequent trip to Maple Canyon. This week, to my amazement, I received a very feeling email update from someone who at first signed herself “the trucker’s wife,” though then gave her name.

Jessica (she approves a post but prefers first names) and Brian have been trying to, as she put it, connect the dots from that day. Brian has been through many surgeries and has more to come, but Jessica wrote that he is positive and tough, saying, “He is doing very well considering all his injuries. His determination to get better for his wife and four sons is amazing.”

The couple’s sons were aged 4 to 18 at the time of the accident.

“We have always been a very close family,” she wrote, “but this experience has brought us closer.”

As the two-year anniversary of the accident approached, Brian, who cannot remember the first three weeks after the accident, was looking on the internet for information, and stumbled on this article. He and his wife had only previously seen police and news photos.

Her email continued: “We have heard how heroic the whole scene felt as everyone came together and rallied around…We spoke to one bystander who said, ‘Men were walking around with their shirts missing, as they had used them to apply pressure to the wounds, and everyone was helping where they could. I could see his wedding ring so I tried to keep him conscious by talking to him about his wife.’”

She and Brian would like to thank everyone, from bystanders to all emergency responders and medical caregivers, who helped.

Brian was flown to Denver, 400 miles from their home in Farmington, New Mexico, and remained there a month. Jessica wrote, “The two older sons helped care for the younger ones, and we have a wonderful family, friends and employers who also helped with the boys while Brian and I were in Denver.”

I still haven’t found the stranger who waved us all down, and she’d very much like to, too: “The stranger is a true hero, and I would love to thank him as well for helping to prevent other injuries and taking action….Every day we are thankful for all the people who have helped to keep Brian with us.”

It is a long shot, to think we’d ever find the guy in the T-shirt in the rain, but then again I never expected to hear from the driver, which alone would be enough.

Now and then the internet helps us solve a mystery, such as when, ten years ago, a curious Aspen Times reporter, Tim Mutrie, unearthed an old climbing pack in an office closet and wondered where it came from. By chance I saw his note on Facebook. In 1988, four of us had found that lone pack, a disquieting sight, on top of the remote 400-foot Moses Tower, Taylor Canyon, Utah. Tim opened the old camera within and had the film developed. A week later we had a face, and in three weeks, again by chance, we had

Maybe the internet can help here. If you think you know who the quick thinker was at accident, please write aosius@outsideinc.com.

Alison Osius is a travel editor at şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř.

The post In 2022 A Stranger Saved Us in a Storm at Green River. Trying to Find Him, I Just Got a Surprise. appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.