Criminal idiot parboiled at YNP

profdant139 wrote:
You are exactly right -- those folks (me and DW!) are pretty far from the geyser -- maybe a hundred feet. (Zoom lens!) Before sitting down, we felt the ground with our hands to see if it was wet. Or too hot. It was dry and warm.

But I freely admit that standing (let's say) a hundred yards away would be safer. We were well aware of the risks (minimal but not zero). We wanted to get as close to this back-country geyser as we could while still staying safe.

The same is true of surfing, which we do all the time. There is a risk of shark attack. There is a risk of getting hit by a surfboard. There is a substantial risk of getting stung by a sting ray (which has happened to me the last two times we went to the beach). Risk is part of adventure travel.

We hike across snowfields, knowing that there is a risk of avalanche. If the slope is too steep, we don't cross it.

We swim in creeks in the Sierra -- we test the current first. But if we are wrong, and the current is too strong, we get swept away and drown.

We climb fairly steep granite domes, like Lembert Dome in Yosemite. The traction is good, but there is always a chance that your foot will slip and you will get hurt.

Some risks are not capable of being managed. Do we know that the person in line next to us at the grocery store does not have Covid? There is no way to know, so we minimize our contacts with the outside world.

So the issue is not "do you take risks?" It is "how do you behave in order to minimize risk while still living your life?"

Stepping off a boardwalk at Yellowstone is stupid. It's forbidden, too. Taking a risk without being able to evaluate its magnitude is a recipe for death. That's the key -- the saying is "look before you leap," not "never ever leap anything."

It's hard to tell from the picture that you're treading lightly, as the saying goes.

My family's high-risk pastime is off-road motorsports and we're very sensitive about being good stewards of our public lands and also not doing anything (like posting ambiguous pics) that would cast our already-unpopular group in a bad light. Perception is everything and it only takes a few perceived bad acts to wreck it for everyone else.