Colin Scott, boiled and dissolved in a hot spring

In short
On 7 June 2016 Colin Nathaniel Scott, 23, from Portland, left the boardwalks of Yellowstone’s Norris Geyser Basin with his sister Sable to look for a pool to bathe in. As he bent down to check the water temperature, he slipped into an acidic, boiling hot spring. By the next day nothing was left of his body.

In May 2016 Colin Scott graduated in psychology. A month later he decided to visit the famous Yellowstone park with his sister Sable, but something went wrong. He fell into a hot spring and was boiled alive.

Colin Scott

Colin Scott and his sister Sable decided to visit the famous Yellowstone National Park, in the United States, on 7 June 2016. The park covers almost 9,000 square kilometres and is the oldest national park in the world. Every year millions of tourists explore its natural wonders, including its hot springs with their brightly coloured waters. And it was in one of these springs that Colin died.

Colin Nathaniel Scott was 23, came from Portland, Oregon, had just graduated from Pacific University and had volunteered at a nature preserve.

He and his sister recklessly decided to leave the boardwalks built specifically to let tourists see the park’s nature, heading into a forbidden area. It was afternoon and they were in the Norris Geyser Basin, near Pork Chop Geyser: from there they walked about 200 metres up a hill. Their goal was to find a hot spring where they could relax for a while, a practice called “hot potting” that is banned in the park.

But the two young people perhaps did not know how dangerous the area was. The ground around the thermal pools is very often a thin crust of mud that would not hold the weight of an adult.

The fall into the hot spring

It was just as Colin was approaching a hot spring that the tragedy began. While his sister filmed him on her smartphone, he unknowingly stepped onto a thin crust of mud. As he bent down to check the water temperature, he fell into the spring, a pool about 2 metres long and 3 metres deep, whose water that day was over 100 degrees Celsius.

His sister immediately called for help and tried to save her brother, in vain. The video she was shooting captured the moment Colin Scott fell into the pool and his sister’s rescue attempts. Because of its sensitive content, however, it has not been made public.

Rescuers saw Colin’s body in the water, but a lightning storm prevented them from recovering it. On the second attempt, the next day, the young man’s body had disappeared. The boiling, acidic water of the hot spring had completely dissolved it.

The recovery operation was called off as pointless: there was no body to recover, only his wallet and a flip-flop floating in the pool. According to experts, the body had dissolved because of the acidity and the extremely high temperature of the water.

Responsibility

Park officials stressed that the whole park is full of signs forbidding access to areas off the trails and warning of the danger of geothermal activity. Just one day earlier, a group of people had been cited for leaving one of the trails. A week later a Chinese tourist had to pay a 1,000-dollar fine for approaching a spring; he said he wanted to collect some water for medicinal purposes.

A similar accident had happened in Bolivia, where a man fell into a geyser and was boiled alive.

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