Most national parks are not inherently dangerous, but park visitors can expect to encounter serious hazards to life and limb at various places and times in our National Park System. If you've narrowly escaped from a life threatening situation in a national park, tell us about it. Is there a takeaway lesson?
Reader Participation Day: Have You Had a "Close Call" in a National Park?
Published Date
March 7, 2012
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So this barely qualifies as a narrow escape, but it's a category of hazard that hasn't really come up in this thread yet. My last childhood visit to Yellowstone took place in the summer of 1990. This was two years after the the forest fires of 1988 and there were still a ton of standing snags. My family was hiking the Fountain Paint Pot trail. My brother and I were moving a bit faster than our parents and drew just out of sight from each other at a bend around a slope. Suddenly there was a crashing noise and I spun around to see a pine falling across the trail maybe 20 feet behind us. It had fallen between us and my parents, much to their alarm as they didn't know how far ahead my brother and I had gotten.
What was weird, as we reunited and tried to piece together what had happened, was that both parties had seen a live tree falling to the right, even though we were viewing it from opposite sides. Moreover there was a saw-cut snag atop the tree now lying across the trail. Nearest we could figure, a dead snag chainsawed down by a trail crew had wedged between two live trees growing close together. Somehow their stressed rooting gave way at just that moment, sending the two live pines falling in opposite directions. My brother and I had watched the tree fall downslope across the trail and our parents saw the other tree falling upslope.