Man ticketed for walking on Old Faithful in Yellowstone
UPDATE: The man has been identified as Gabriel Villalva, of Greeley, Colorado.
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Yellowstone National Park officials say they’ve ticketed a man caught on video walking dangerously close to Old Faithful geyser.
The man’s actions startled several people in a crowd of a couple hundred at the park’s most famous attraction. Some wondered if he planned to jump into the steaming hole known for erupting boiling-hot water every hour or so.
In the video Ashley Lemanski captured, you can hear park rangers yelling at the man telling him he needs to return to the boardwalk.
“This is the park service. Get on the boardwalk! Get off Old Faithful!” can clearly be heard in the video.
A bystander says 14 seconds into the video, “He’s peeing. I don’t even know what to say.”
At one point, the man lay on the ground near the geyser.
Lemanski says rangers caught up with him after he eventually walked back onto nearby boardwalks and paths.
Yellowstone spokesman Neal Herbert said Monday that rangers cited the unidentified man with walking off the boardwalks in a thermal area.
This is one of three notable incidents that have grabbed attention recently in Yellowstone National Park.
On Thursday, an elk in Mammoth Hot Springs knocked a man to the ground. You can read more HERE.
Also earlier this summer, 55-year-old Oregon man Raymond Reinke was sentenced to 130 days in jail after harassing a bison in that stopped traffic in Yellowstone National Park. You can read more about that incident HERE and HERE.
