The Norris Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park is interesting for many reasons. The Porcelain Basin is one of the most colorful expanses of land in Yellowstone. The variety of thermophiles that thrive in the hot, acidic environments of the basic come in a rich pallet of colors. The Steamboat Geyser is the world’s tallest active geyser. Unfortunately, it is notoriously unpredictable, and infrequent. It does still plop up the occasional sprits of water for hopeful viewers, but that is about it. But for those interested in the macabre, there is also a body here that was never collected.
Colin Nathaniel Scott was 23 when the ground beneath him crumbled and the acidic hot spring consumed him. He had wandered 225 feet off the boardwalk with his sister near Porkchop Geyser one Tuesday in June, 2016. The pool that consumed him is also the site of the highest recorded temperature in the park, 459 degrees Fahrenheit. His sister, unharmed, alerted park rangers to help her brother, but there was nothing rangers could do. Experts were brought in but, for the same reasons that the boardwalk was created in the first place, rescuers could not safely retrieve his body. The ground is firm in some places, fragile in others, and they would not risk another persons life.
We stayed on the boardwalks.
