A tourist at Yellowstone’s Lower Falls risked his life on Wednesday by climbing out to a dangerous section of rocks above the raging 308-foot waterfall. A professional rock climber and author told Cowboy State Daily the action was so idiotic he was “laughing at the stupidity.”Pictures of a guy scaling a cliff face to capture the thunderous Yellowstone Lower Falls highlight the extremes some visitors are willing to go to, both literally and figuratively, in order to get the best shots of the park’s breathtaking landscape and fauna. The Facebook page “Yellowstone National Park: Invasion of the Idiots,” which compiles an endless supply of images and videos, including the ones from Wednesday showing the man outside the falls, has many of these that were taken by other people and posted. With a long lens, Jeff Hahn was able to record the man’s retreat as he made his way down to one of the most perilous locations in the national park: the edge of the Lower Falls in the Yellowstone.
One misstep or slip wuld Grand Canyon be certain death.
Wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and what looked like Converse shoes, the bespeckled man was captured creeping across a small precipice of jagged slope back to wherever he descended from.
The white curtain of roaring water, which can send up to 60,000 gallons of per second plunging 308 feet down, seems only a few feet away.
No climbing is permitted in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, but even for a tourism season already predicted to see more bad tourist behavior, the recklessness on display in Hahn’s photos is almost too much for even seasoned “touron” watchers.
And in this case, the indications are that this tourist was lucky to escape with his life, and he knew it.
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