A judge banned Eric Schefflin, 20, of Lakewood, Colorado, and Ryan Goetz, 25, of Woodstock, New York from Yellowstone National Park for walking on the Old Faithful geyser cone, reports the Powell Tribune. The gents also received "10 days in jail, $540 in restitution each and five years of unsupervised probation," according to the paper.
“Law enforcement officers take this violation seriously,” Chief Ranger Sarah Davis said in the news release. “Yellowstone National Park also appreciates the court for recognizing the impact thermal trespass can have on these amazing features.”
Hydrothermal areas like Old Faithful are generally fragile, and the ground can often be thin, with scalding water just below.
About three weeks after Schefflin and Goetz got too close to Old Faithful, a 48-year-old man learned of the danger first-hand. Cade Siemers, a U.S. citizen who’d been living in India, fell into scalding thermal water near the geyser late on the night of Sept. 30. He suffered severe burns that required him to be flown to a burn center in Idaho.
Now is as good a time as any to remember the Boy Scout leader who deliberately toppled a 170 million year old rock formation in the Utah desert in 2013.
Photo by Emily Campbell on Unsplash
