A man from Idaho Falls, Idaho got caught trying to cook chickens in a thermal area of Yellowstone National Park.
A ranger found the man and a group of nine other people with cooking pots and two chickens this August, East Idaho News reported.
Yellowstone Cooking Lessons
The ranger had gotten tips that the group was heading toward Shoshone Geyser Basin loaded down with pots. When the ranger followed up, he found two chickens in a burlap sack stuffed in a hot spring near a cooking pot, according to East Idaho News.
The Idaho Falls man and two of his compatriots received citations for foot travel in a thermal area. The man also had to go to court in Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming.
It’s against the rules to walk off the boardwalks or designated trails in Yellowstone’s hydrothermal areas. Putting objects into thermal features is similarly verboten.
In court on Sept. 10, the Idaho Falls man pleaded guilty to two charges: foot travel in a thermal area and violating closures and use limits. The court banned him from Yellowstone National Park. Moreover, the court ordered him to pay $1,200 in total and serve two years of unsupervised probation.
Yellowstone’s Hot Springs
The National Park Service warns visitors that Yellowstone’s hot springs have injured and killed more people in the park than any other natural feature there.
There are more than 10,000 hydrothermal features in Yellowstone. More than 500 of those are geysers.
The water in Yellowstone’s hot springs was originally rain that got superheated by the park’s magmatic system. The boiling water then rises back to the surface. Occasionally it explodes and shoots into the air, much like a geyser.
In 2001, the Associated Press reported, a Seattle TV show host tried to show that natural heat can cook a chicken. After he dug a hole near a geyser, Yellowstone officials fined his show $150 and put him on probation for two years for disturbing mineral deposits in a national park and stepping off trails.
