what was the most dangerous thing you’ve seen a tourist do in a national park?

29 comments

1. Try to take a picture with a big ass buffalo.

2. Probably selfies on the edge of a 1,500+ ft cliff. Certain death if you slip.

3. Buffalo. They are so fuzzy and cute in person (I go to Yellowstone frequently) so I understand the appeal to want to touch them if you don’t know any better, but man they can flip you 30 feet in the air and gore you like that. I will say that there are some social ones I have noticed that seem like they are more acclimatized to people and actually come up to people rather than the other way around and seem like they want to be petted. Im sure Ill get downvotes for even pointing that out but I do see some of these every time I go. Everybody wants to be loved occasionally I think.

4. Get too close to cliff edges. It really, really stresses me out, even more than the idiots who are getting too close to bears and bison and moose.

5. Probably me going on a solo backpacking trip in Denali without any sort of bear protection at all. I had no idea what I was doing. I saw lots of bears and didn’t sleep much.

6. Tree a black bear cub during cub season to take photos of said bear.

7. Approach an animal to try to take a picture. Buffalo and moose are a little more obvious, perhaps, but elk will still charge you if provoked.

   Most damaging is walking off-trail, especially on the tundra. Your instagram pic comes at the expense of a fragile ecosystem, people.

8. Haven’t seen but heard about.

   People messing around the acidic hot springs in Yellowstone. Those can kill you if you fall in

9. My dad and several others got really close to a moose to take its picture.

10. Probably me getting lost in Gifford Pinchot National Forest while offroading.

    It wasn’t enough that I was driving along a several thousand foot dropoff, but I got lost. At one pont, I came to a pretty cool looking rock. It was out in the open, so I pulled out my handheld GPS to get my bearings. I then kinda puckered up….

    The rock I found was called Cougar Rock. It was time to go.

    I eventually got out, but I was so much further south than I thought, having gone over terrain much tougher than I planned for.

    I exited the National Forest and, instead of being near Mt. St. Helens like I thought, I crossed a bridge into a town called Hood River, Oregon.

11. Yellowstone. A woman was screaming at her kid to get closer to the bison for a picture. People are incredibly stupid.

12. Taking pictures in the edge of the Grand Canyon, past the rail, in snow. Wearing sneakers. Asian tourists are crazy, I had to walk away. A few weeks later a Chinese guy fell in and died.

13. Climb Mt. Rainier without adequate equipment.

14. Not a national park, but a state park. Some idiot Louisiana tourist tried to jump from my local bluffs into a lake without checking the water first. Luckily my sister and I stopped him. He almost broke his legs. It was a 20 ft drop into maybe 6 ft of water

15. Getting too close to thermal features in Yellowstone. Last year a guy fell in one and all that was left was his severed foot in a shoe. Edit: didn’t see it myself, read about it.

16. Walk up to Buffalo and elk at Yellowstone like it was a damned petting w

17. Heroin

18. I’m south Dakota I say people climbing the rocks in the bad lands. If they survived the fall they would have probably startled a rattle snake.

19. Try to hug a Florida black bear it may be the smallest bear but it is still a fucking bear

20. Walk off the walkways in Yellowstone. Falling into a vast pit of scalding water kills you in a horrific way. The ground is often fragile and even though the water looks like clear pleasant bath water it can be just below boiling and you die before you can get out and if you don’t the burns are bad enough you die not long after.

    I saw people leave the walkways and saw a park Ranger grab them and drag them back to violently.

21. Go off the boardwalk at Yellowstone national Park

22. I have seen people in the White Mountains in rough seasons, fall and spring, when it can look nice at the trailhead but be brutally cold, windy, icy, snowy, etc at the top of the ridge go off half cocked wearing car clothing, no boots, and not carrying serious gear.

    This is why every year there are always a few people that die in the white mountains for no reason other than stupidity, bull headedness, and unpreparedness.

23. Let a dirtbag squirrel eat peanuts out of their mouth at Zion.

24. I was in Banff National Park and there was this bear munching on some dandelions on the side of the road. We stopped to snap a few photos but we stayed in our car. We saw a bunch of other people just get out of their car and walk closer to get a better picture. There was even a woman who had her baby in her hands and still decided to get out of the car. Like bruh the bear decides if you’re living that day if you get out of your car.

25. If state parks and state forests count:

    Sending your toddler in front of a live firing range to pick up spent rounds, many shooters had ARs, including one with a folding table so their 5-year-old could stabilize her Armalite. (Tillamook State Forest)

    Wading out through known rip-tide waters to a tiny but beautiful island with incoming tide, no inhabitable land, everything completely vertical, the beach where we lose a family a year. (Ecola State Park)

26. I have some common sense because I live in rural Alaska, but at the Grand Canyon National Park I saw a tourist get *behind a big horn sheep and try to pet it while the tourist was also with their roughly nine year old child.* I was just imagining them getting rammed or kicked. Fucking stupid as hell.

27. People getting close to a clearly pissed off rattlesnake that was coiling and striking, trying to get a picture.

28. Encountering people who are lost, have no map, and are surprised to discover they don’t have cell service in the mountains.

29. I didn’t get in the pen at all with them awake when I had bison (100 percent protected contact). They will mess you up. Cows with babies just as much as bulls.

    If any animal in a park setting changes it’s behavior you are too close. You can tell the habituated animals from the non. Unfortunately the habituated animals are more dangerous. Them not changing their behavior encourages you to get too close. That’s fine for a deer. Not a buffalo or bear.

    Spotting Scopes people, and binoculars. Those are much much better than a obituary.